Gone for Soldiers
by Polexia Aphrodite
Summary: The missions make them feel better: getting a good punch in, cracking a few ribs, beating the bad guys. They both like pretending that the world is black-and-white for a few hours or a few days, however long it takes to get the job done. Steve/Natasha, occasional Steve/Natasha/Bucky and Bucky/Maria Hill.
1. Gone for Soldiers

_**Notes**:_ So here's this. Because of all the set photos coming out of _Winter Soldier_, I am full of Steve/Natasha/Bucky feels, and this series of drabbles knitted into a story is kind of a product of that. Hope some of you like it. Reviews are very, very appreciated, so if you feel so inclined, please leave one.

_**Disclaimer:** _All characters belong to Marvel.

* * *

_i will wade out_

_ til my thighs are steeped in burning flowers_

_I will take the sun in my mouth_

_and leap into the ripe air_

_ Alive_

_ with closed eyes_

_ to dash against darkness_

_ in the sleeping curves of my body_

_ Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery_

_ with chasteness of sea-girls_

_ Will i complete the mystery_

_ of my flesh_

_ I will rise_

_ After a thousand years_

_ lipping_

_ flowers_

_ And set my teeth in the silver of the moon_

- E.E. Cummings, _I Will Wade Out_

* * *

After the Winter Soldier is taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, Fury starts sending Steve and Natasha out together. Neither of them are any good to him in New York; they're too shaken and preoccupied, too haunted. So he sends them out where their ghosts – where _he_ – can't follow them.

They're a good team: her cunning and adaptability matched to his strength and tactical expertise. The missions make them feel better: getting a good punch in, cracking a few ribs, beating the bad guys. They both like pretending that the world is black-and-white for a few hours or a few days, however long it takes to get the job done.

It doesn't take long for them to figure out that neither of them really sleeps at night, so they stay up together, silently prowling the dark alleys of Los Angeles or Kiev or Frankfurt in plainclothes, waiting to hear a cry for help and fly into action.

More often than not, they'd rather be out of their hotel rooms, anyway. Every once in a while, the mission calls for a swanky room in a Ritz-Carlton or a Hilton, but "undercover" usually means stained carpets and scratchy sheets.

He likes her. He sees the soldier in her, in the straight line of her back and the way she stands, with her feet planted firmly on the ground. It's something he recognizes. Something familiar.

It's their fifth time out together, bunked in what must be Chicago's seediest hotel, when Natasha knocks on his door. Steve lets her in without comment. She has a bottle of Stoli in one hand and a pair of shot glasses in the other. All three hit the veneered chipboard table with a loud _clink_. As she twists off the cap, she meets his gaze. His eyebrows are raised, surprise and uncertainty plain on his face.

She just shrugs, palming the cap and filling the tiny glasses. "Goddamn Barnes," she mutters. Something sympathetic and a little wistful crosses her face as she passes a glass to him.

He smiles a little. Before this, before Bucky came back, he hadn't ever thought that he would have something in common with her. He realizes now how shortsighted he had been. As if a veil had been pulled away, he sees her as she is: strong, but lonely. Hurt, but angry. They aren't so different.

Steve takes the shot glass from her, swallows its contents in one gulp.

"Ugh," he makes a face, "'S like drinking gasoline."

Her lips curve up into a smile as she pours them another round. He stretches out on the bed; she kicks her feet up onto the table.

"The more you drink, the less it burns."

They talk for a long while – about the mission at first, then about everything, _anything_, else. They both know that they'll be spending the next day dodging bullets and trying not to get killed and, for a perverse moment, Steve's hit with a wave of nostalgia. What's so different, really, between what they're doing now and sitting in a foxhole with Morita or Dum Dum or Bucky?

It takes a lot of shots before Natasha's eyelids start to droop. When she moves to the bed, trying not to stumble on her way there, and lies down next to him, Steve doesn't tell her not to.

After a long, silent moment, she taps him on the shoulder.

"Get the lights, will you?"

* * *

It gets to be a habit, one of them showing up at the other's door with some kind of offering: cartons full of takeout food or a bottle of booze. They call them "debriefings," and they usually end up falling asleep next to each other.

After a while, Natasha starts making their hotel reservations for missions, putting them in one room instead of two, not bothering with the pretense that they might sleep separately. She tells Fury she's trying to save the agency money, which earns her a dry look but no contradictions.

Most nights they sleep together laid out in parallel lines, but Steve likes knowing he's not alone, even if they aren't touching. He thinks she likes it too. After hard fights or particularly violent interrogations, they sleep with his big arms wrapped around her waist, pressing his front to her back, warming them both through.

She's entirely different when she's asleep: her brow smooths and her mouth relaxes. She looks ten years younger. But when she frowns in her sleep, when her fists clench, Steve knows a nightmare is coming, knows that she is only moments away from crying out and waking herself up. It's then that Steve pulls her against his chest. It's then that Natasha lets herself wrap her arms around him. When the nightmares are at their worst, she lets him kiss her cheekbones and neck and run his hands through her hair until she feels herself even out.

When it's Steve who jerks awake, it takes all the strength Natasha has to pin him down, to wake him up. Every time, he apologizes. She doesn't say anything, just fits her body against his, her hand stroking the back of his neck, and waits until he falls asleep again. There's something friendly about the way she touches him. Friendly in the way that it's comforting and easy, not overly-charged with feeling or expectations. It feels better than he wants it to. Better than either of them are ready to admit.

Back in New York, they go their separate ways. They both try to talk to Bucky – or whoever he is now – but he's a million miles away. Fury assures them that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s doctors will keep hammering away at him, but it's cold comfort.

* * *

They spend a lot of time together in cars. When the missions are domestic, they spend endless hours driving across country on their way to their next assignment, stopping only to load up on gas and fast food. Steve has a natural inclination towards tidiness, but after Natasha tells him that Fury hates it when S.H.I.E.L.D. cars come back messy, they start turning their backseats into trash dumps.

When they get back, Natasha shows him how to file his reports and which forms need to be filled out in triplicate. She laughs when he rolls his eyes at the bureaucratic absurdity of it.

In New York, he only ever sees her inside the confines of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sleek New York headquarters, most often at Fury's daily briefings. Even in a crowd, they start to gravitate towards each other: she'll takes the empty seat next to him, or he'll suddenly find that he's moved to stand next to her. Surrounded by their teammates and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, he tries valiantly not to think about the fact that he knows what it's like to wake up with her warm in his arms.

* * *

When they don't fall asleep in their clothes, when they still have the energy to change, Steve slips into a t-shirt and sweatpants. Natasha sleeps in leggings and tank tops.

Steve has come to think of her as a friend, but the blood that courses through his veins is just as red as anyone else's, and the first time he realizes that she isn't wearing a bra, he goes to great lengths to hide his body's reaction. He turns his back to her, pretending to sleep while she reads. After a while, she turns off the light. The mattress dips as she slides under the covers.

"Hey," she says, a little gruffly.

He grunts in response.

"Come here," she pulls at his arm and he tries not to budge. She huffs, "I'm on to you. I won't take it personally."

Steve turns his face to her and in the dim light, she just barely sees his eyebrow raise. "You probably should."

Natasha bites the inside of her cheek to stop from smiling.

"Just don't—Don't be so far away."

His jaw clenches. Refusal is impossible. He uses some of his indomitable-super-soldier willpower to force down his erection and lets her curl herself around him, her head on his shoulder.

* * *

Steve wants to know how it ended, his war. He finds out about Auschwitz and Dachau, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his nightmares take on a new dimension.

Maybe it's because of who he is, because he still wears the stars and stripes, but he decides it's his responsibility to know what else happened while he was asleep. He reads about My Lai and Agent Orange and the Hanoi Hilton. He reads about 9/11 and Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. His bad dreams turn into night terrors.

It seems unfair, in a way, he thinks, that everyone else has had decades to adjust to the idea that these terrible things have happened while he uncovers them all at once. When Natasha finally tells him to stop seeking out the things he wished he could have prevented, he listens to her.

She would never – _never – _tell him, but she's glad he knows what they all know, now: the truths about what people are capable of. Some of his softness, his innocence, fades. His skin grows a little thicker, and Natasha feels like they can understand each other a little better.

* * *

She's not shy about her scars, but then she's not shy about most things. One night, she pulls up the hem of her shirt to show him the worst one – a thick, silvery band stretched across the curve of her lower back. He can't stop his fingers from tracing the raised line, trying not to imagine how bad the injury must have been. Her skin, even the scar tissue, is soft under his touch and he forces himself to pull his hand away.

Fury starts to look at them more sternly during debriefings. They get the job done, but he can see them going off-script, taking matters into their own hands. He's especially surprised at Steve. His reputation had led Fury to believe that he would be more obedient. When he tries to reassign them, they revolt, insisting on staying together.

Steve knows that he feels too much for her already. It's unprofessional and compromising, and a part of him wishes that he could stop himself. But things feel right when he's with her. The world makes a little more sense when the two of them laugh at it together. He's not prepared to push that away.

* * *

They spend months going out on missions, curling up in bed together every night and never mentioning it after they turn in their hotel room keys.

She always calls him "Cap," in public and in bed, until the night she doesn't. Neither of them had been able to sleep, but Natasha insists that they get under the covers, turn out the lights, and at least _try_.

After a while of lying awake in the dark, Natasha shifts next to him, leans up, and presses her lips to his. She feels like she's resisted it for ages, this simple touch. Of course she wants him, she would have to be made of stone not to, and she's felt his reaction to the press of her body enough times to know that he wants her, too. But she doesn't want him to be like all the others – another conquest, another job – and he isn't. He's more.

Her hands snake around his shoulders and he slides his fingers under her tank top. He doesn't mind the sharp taste of vodka on her tongue as it licks into his mouth.

He doesn't know how far she wants to take this, and even though his hands seem sure as they move across her back, he stumbles a little mentally. When he moves his mouth to her throat, kissing the sharp line of her collarbone, she weaves her fingers into his hair and gasps, "_Steve_."

They stay wrapped around each other, kissing and touching, for another half-hour, but in the end, they're both too exhausted to take it further. There's a part of Steve – and not a small part – that doesn't want her like this, on assignment, with the weight of the world hanging over them. If they make love, he wants it to be in a bed one of them owns, with an endless expanse of time stretched out in front of them.

She clings to him without meaning to, and he pulls her close to him. They fall asleep on their sides with one of her legs draped across the curve of his waist.

A month's worth of missions end like this, with heavy petting and heavy breathing in dark hotel rooms. Steve yearns to take it further, but lets her set the pace, achingly slow as it may be.

* * *

He finally asks her about Clint, because any idiot can tell he's in love with her. He thinks it's just the right thing to do, to make sure that he's not going to disrupt the team with whatever it is they're doing together. She tells him that they were together, once, that they had been partners, but that she ended it long ago. She says he's like a brother to her, and Steve can't help but cringe for Clint's sake.

* * *

They're good enough that it takes weeks before they suffer their first serious casualty. They're tracking a terrorist group through Madrid when a series of explosions rocks their hotel. They make their way to the lobby, ushering civilians out of the building, when the second round goes off. When Steve finds Natasha through the smoke and fire, she's lying on her back, her right arm a scorched, bleeding mess. For a crazed moment, he wants to call out for a medic, but he knows there isn't one. Because this is a different kind of war.

"Where's—," she gasps, her face lit up in red and orange, "There was a woman with a child—"

Steve looks around, but they're alone. "They're fine. They got out." He's told so many half-truths to wounded soldiers.

She smiles. Her teeth are outlined in red. "'S what I get for trying to be a goddamn hero."

He smiles back and tells her to keep quiet. He gets her outside and an ambulance takes her to a hospital. When she's stabilized, S.H.I.E.L.D. flies her back to New York so their doctors can fix her up.

When he visits her in the S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital ward, she's bandaged from shoulder to wrist, but she's sitting upright. He tries not to think about the parallel it makes to Bucky's metal left arm. She gives him a small smile when he walks in and sits next to her.

He clears his throat, looking at his hands. "I got to thinking about how S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have a habit of giving credit where it's due, and the way you got that—," he gestures to her arm and pulls a small, rectangular black box out of his jacket pocket, "I think you should have this."

She looks at him skeptically as she takes it. It looks suspiciously like a jewelry box, and, lame arm or not, she's pretty sure that kind of gift is going to earn him a swift kick in the head. But when she opens it, it's not that at all.

She runs the fingers of her good hand across the purple ribbon, traces the outline of the gold and enamel heart.

"I can't take this," she says quietly.

He shrugs and smiles, "I got a spare. This one's yours."

He tells her he has to meet Fury. Before he leaves, he presses a kiss to the crown of her head, one of his big hands on her shoulder, and tells her to get better.

He's almost out the door when she says "Thank you," almost so quietly that he doesn't hear it. But he does. He turns and raises his hand to his brow. It's not a regulation salute, but it makes her smile.

* * *

It's not all blood and groping, though. They watch terrible movies on cable together and eat too much takeout and drink too much. They get ready together in the mornings, hovering around each other as they brush their teeth and comb their hair and suit up.

Between sharing a room and fixing each other up after fights, they grow accustomed to seeing each other in various states of undress. She finds out that he still wears his dog tags under his clothes.

"Are these vintage?" she asks one morning, leaning against the counter of a white tiled bathroom in the Cairo Hilton. She shifts closer and snatches one up, her fingers grazing his bare chest.

He shrugs and smiles, wiping shaving cream off his chin with a damp washcloth, "Like me."

She runs her fingers over the imprinted lettering:

STEPHEN G ROGERS

O-1275455 T42-43 O

JAMES BARNES

1404 ALAMEDA AVE

BROOKLYN, NY C

Natasha gives him a wry look. She had thought _she_ was hung up on Barnes, but _God_, he's been wearing his name around his neck for seventy years.

"I had to get special permission from my CO for that. Since we weren't related."

"Did he get permission, too?"

"His CO was a little more understanding than mine," he says, and he _winks _at her.

That night, after they shower the stinging heat of the day off of them, she finally asks him about Bucky. He tells her what it was like to grow up with him. Tells her about how they struggled to make ends meet, how Bucky took care of him when he was sick and chased away his bullies. He tells her how they shared an apartment, shared a life. He doesn't tell her everything, but she gives him a knowing look and squeezes his hand, and he knows that she heard all the things he didn't say.

She finally tells him how she knew him. How she loved him. She tells Steve how they met, how he flattered and cajoled her into his bed. She tells him how young she was then, and how she thought - _hoped _- they would always be together.

When she tells him, when he tells her, something shifts between them. There are fewer secrets. Fewer places to hide.

* * *

They spend a week in Dallas, where Fury has tasked them with taking down a human trafficking ring. Neither of them like this kind of assignment – the missions where it's less about roundhouse kicks and more about sad-eyed victims. But it's work that has to be done.

On their last night, they stay up late talking about nothing in particular, trying not to think about the awful things they've seen in the last few days. They both skirt around what they need: contact, and a reminder that they might still have something worth having.

Darkness always grants them a little boldness, though. After the lights go out, she pulls him on top of her, between her legs, pressing her fully-clothed hips against his until he can do nothing else but grind back, his mouth against hers. Her fingers are woven in his hair and her thighs are tight around his waist. She lets him pull her top off, arching her back as his hands trace the outline of her breasts.

Somewhere around the time Steve starts moving against her in earnest, the hard ridge of his erection sliding against her through layers of fabric, she cries out and rocks beneath him, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, holding him against her. He comes in his sweats, and he's too relieved to feel embarrassed. But he's pretty sure she came too, so maybe it isn't that embarrassing, anyway.

When he tries to shift off of her, her arms tighten around him.

"Stay," she says.

He nuzzles the side of her neck, "'M too heavy." He's also starting to worry about the mess he's made, which he's certain she must be aware of, but she doesn't let go of him.

"Don't go." She tells herself she's not begging. Really, she isn't. "Don't."

He sighs into the joint between her neck and shoulder, feeling in way over his head. He hugs her against his chest and rolls them onto one side. When they finally sink into sleep, one of his legs is still caught between hers.

* * *

Tony's not really part of the team anymore, not since the retirement he can't stop talking about, but he acts like he is, and he retains his status as an "Adviser." He insists on team-building activities, poker nights and movie nights, mostly. Steve starts to suspect that, despite his fame, he might not have many friends.

Their so-called "bonding" nights are mostly innocuous, and sometimes fun, though Steve finds it hard to look Clint in the eye after what happened in Dallas. Clint and Tony are usually in charge of movie selection, but Natasha quickly vetoes war movies. She knows that Steve still gets flashbacks – she's seen him crumple under the weight of them – and whenever Tony brings up _Apocalypse Now _or suggests they use Steve to check the accuracy of _Band of Brothers_, Natasha threatens to leave until they cave and pick something harmless and light.

* * *

He knows she's seeing Bucky – but she calls him James – when they're in New York. He figures it out on his own, but she tells him, too. She tells him that he isn't better, that he doesn't remember Steve at all. She says all he does is sneer and swear at her and she can only take it for about twenty minutes at a time. She tells Steve not to see him, not yet. She tries to tell him that there might still be hope, and he tries to believe her.

But he doesn't take her advice, not exactly. He spends hours just watching him through the two-way mirror that overlooks his cell. Steve watches as he paces, watches him pick at his food, watches him scream at no one. He only lets Natasha know how much it breaks his heart.

* * *

They've been in Reykjavik for a week. It's the middle of winter, and the dark and cold is almost more than Steve can take. The mission is a milk run, and they can't help but feel like Fury is thumbing his nose at them.

The near-constant darkness breaks their internal clocks; they stay up too late and sleep the mornings away. It's their third, interminable night there and, like the two nights before, it ends with Natasha in his arms, her fingers buried in his hair, her mouth hot against his.

His mind wanders a little, but not far. He thinks about the things she's given him: her kisses, her gentle touches and her rough ones, the feel of her clenching around him as she comes, the pride he feels in knowing that he can make her do that without even undressing her. He thinks about how she has his back, and about how he has hers.

He pulls himself away, taking her face in his hands.

"What is this?"

In the dim light of the room, her brow creases and she bites her lower lip.

"I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't question it too much."

Steve hesitates. He _wants_ to question it, not because he wants it to stop – ever – but because he longs to know where he stands with her. He doesn't think Natasha has _boyfriends_ – the word seems silly and insufficient, and like the kind of thing she would scoff at – and he certainly doesn't mistake the carnage they inflict together for _dates_, but, he thinks, there must be something in between that describes them.

Natasha sighs. She knows him too well; she knows what he wants, and she knows that she's terrible at it. Back in New York, she watches Tony and Pepper, or Thor and Jane, and, while she finds their displays of affection revolting, she doesn't understand why it comes so easily to some people when it's so hard for her.

"I…" she starts and stops, then forces herself to keep talking. His eyes are fixed on her, and she makes herself return his gaze, "I like you. I like us." She clears her throat. "Do you?"

"God, _yes_," he says, pulling her back against him, his mouth on the side of her neck. It wasn't much, but it was all he needed.

She wants to tell him more. She wants to tell him that the thought of him follows her everywhere, now. She wants to tell him how she wants them to be together in New York, too: to go out to movies and restaurants and make love and find out what it's like to be normal. But instead she just lets him kiss her for a while longer, lets him whisper her name into the darkness and run his hands over aching body until they're both drained. She falls asleep with her hand in his.

They sleep in late; when Natasha's eyes open, the few hours of daylight they will see that day have already commenced, filling the room with cool, grey light. Steve's arms are around her and he's pressing hard against her hip. It's certainly not the first time she's felt it, but somehow, after the night before, it feels like the first time she can do something about it.

She lowers her hand and traces the outline of him through his heather-gray sweatpants; he moans and presses against her fingers, his eyes still closed. The sound makes her press her thighs together to dampen the growing throb between her legs.

His eyes blink open and he looks down at her. The sight of her is overwhelming: her sleep-tousled hair and bare face. Her lips are parted, her breathing already growing heavier as her hand moves. She looks back at him and he sees her, sees everything, and it lays him low. He _loves_ this. He loves _her._

She lifts his sweats away and down, letting him bob free for a moment before she takes him in hand. His erection is even more than she expected (and Natasha considers herself something of a connoisseur): impressive in both length and girth, smooth and pink, emerging proudly from a thatch of dark blond curls.

He sighs and his breath catches a little. Her gaze flickers up to his, he gives her a sleepy half-smile, and suddenly she wants him, not just because he's beautiful, but because it's _him_. Because she feels safe when he holds her, and she hadn't known that she needed that. Because no matter where they go, he always manages to find a place that has extra spicy Pad Kee Mao, because he knows it's her favorite. Because he's just as deadly as she is, even though he would never admit it.

"Is this part of what makes you so super?" she tries to smile coyly, but she can hear that her voice is too thick with feeling.

He snorts, also trying for levity, "Nah. I had this before I became a lab rat."

She buries her face against his chest and moves her hand slowly up and down, twisting at the wrist.

His jaw clenches and he bends his head towards hers. He whispers her name against her hair as she strokes him. All he can think about is how wonderful it would be to make love to her in the daylight, when so much of their relationship has been conducted in the dark.

Then, his hands are on the sides of her waist, gently rolling onto her back. Her hand falls away from him and he lets himself miss her touch, only for a second. His fingers hook into the waistband of her leggings and he pulls slightly. When he looks up at her, her eyebrows are slightly raised, but he ignores her surprise and trails a line of kisses along stomach. He doesn't even know when he started wanting this – wanting her – but it suddenly feels like it's been a long time.

His hand is between her legs, feeling the heat of her through the fabric. She is writhing and gasping under his attentions, and he's sure she doesn't want him to stop, but he needs to hear her say it.

"Tell me…you want…" he gasps. Instead of answering, she lifts her hips, shimmying out of the leggings and the surprisingly demure white cotton panties she wears under them, throwing both to the floor. He doesn't miss a beat, burying his face between her thighs, his tongue seeking out and finding her most sensitive spots.

She's not at all like he thought she'd be. He half expected her to wrest control away from him, to flip him or pin him or throw him across the room. But instead she just whimpers and fists the sheets in her little hands. Her knees go limp on his shoulders, he settles into a languorous, intense rhythm, two thick fingers pushing into her until she cries out.

He reaches up with his free hand and takes one of hers. When he squeezes, she squeezes back. A jolt of energy shoots from her hand, down his arm and his heart feels like it's about to burst out of his chest. She's hot and slick and beautiful. It's so much better than he thought it would be.

Her orgasm rolls over her, deep and powerful, blooming out from the very core of her. It leaves her panting and trembling. He slides over her, planting a delicate kiss on the curve of her shoulder, but she grabs him by the hair and pulls his mouth up to hers, eager to find out what they taste like together.

Something inside Natasha chastises her for letting herself get so weak over him, but her fingers are hooked in his waistband anyway. Her hand brushes against his erection and he groans.

When the transponder goes off, they both jump. Natasha's hands fly away, as though someone had walked in on them. He growls in frustration, lifting himself off of her to find his uniform. Before he goes, he murmurs near her ear, "We _will_ be finishing this later."

They're called out of Iceland and back on the road by afternoon.

* * *

Everything goes upside-down for the next few days. The fighting gets tough; it seems like they're both getting the shit kicked out of them on an hourly basis. When they get back to New York, they're battered and bloody; their mission is accomplished, but just barely.

After S.H.I.E.L.D.'s medical team patches them up, she corners him in the headquarters' lobby, stops him in his tracks with a hand on his arm.

"Take me to your place," she says, "I want to see how you live."

He just nods dumbly and she follows him underground and onto the F Line to Brooklyn.

It's nice, his apartment. Obviously something S.H.I.E.L.D. has given him, but with a few signs of life: dirty dishes in the sink, a stack of sketchpads on the coffee table.

She walks through it like an inspector: examining the books on his shelves, peering into his kitchen, walking down his hallway nudging open closed doors to reveal an empty spare room, a bathroom, and finally, his bedroom. He follows behind. She spends a quiet moment absorbing the space, taking in his California King with its soft grey spread.

Out of nowhere, she pulls a fast one on him, a less-deadly version of a move he's seen her pull a hundred times, and his back is pressed against the mattress. She's warm and soft over him, her legs straddling his hips. She presses her mouth against his and he reaches up for her.

"Here? Are you sure?" _God_, he hopes she's sure. But he knows what it means: that they can't pretend what they do together is just comfort from combat anymore.

She nods, "Unless you—"

She can't help but cringe when she hears how vulnerable she sounds, but she hasn't let anyone in this far since James, and—

"No," he says quickly his hands drifting down her back to her hips, "Yes. Whichever." The relief at knowing that they are finally going to have this together makes him a little giddy, and he can't help the smile that spreads across his face.

She sits up abruptly. Her face is flushed and her hips are still pressed into his.

"You've—You've done this before."

It isn't exactly a question, but Steve nods anyway and her face relaxes a little.

"Good," she flashes a half-smile. "Stark had this pool going."

His eyebrows shoot up. "And what did you bet on?"

"I didn't participate," she says nobly, her back straightening. "I just—I don't do first timers."

He sits up, balancing her on his lap, his teeth and tongue tracing down the side of her neck to her shoulder. "Shouldn't be a problem, then."

She knows that this is the part where she should be telling him the rules for sleeping with her: no feelings, no clinging, no overnight stays (though that one has already been shot to hell). But he smells like Old Spice – and _no one _smells like that anymore – and she loves the way she feels in his arms, and he keeps saying her name and it sounds perfect.

Things progress quickly from there. Steve can't keep track of exactly how it happens, but his clothes are off, and then her clothes are off, and then he has her spread across his bed, her knees on either side of his waist. Her eyes are bright and glassy as she looks up at him, her hands are pressed into his shoulders. He lowers his hand to position himself but hesitates, pulls back, and curses under his breath.

"I don't have any condoms. I didn't think—"

She frowns and shakes her head, "I'm on the pill and I'm clean. I'm not…with anyone else."

He grins, "Me neither."

She can't help smiling back, because his smile is beautiful and contagious and she just feels _happy_.

"Then come back."

For a moment he just covers her, his body heavy and warm above her. Then, she feels his velvety tip at her center, pushing into her, filling her up slowly. Next to her ear, she hears him release a long, shuddering sigh. His hips slowly start to rock back and forth, and the gentle friction makes her toes curl.

"Wanted this," he gasps, and she can hear him coming apart, "Wanted you."

She takes his face in her hands and leans up to kiss him. When she bucks her hips against his, he takes the hint and moves faster, gliding in and out of her in long, deep strokes. It doesn't take long for him to figure out which angles make her cry out and clench her hands in his hair.

It doesn't feel like fooling around, it doesn't even feel like sex. It feels like making love. She's only done this once before, with a man she lost, maybe forever, and now with Steve. It suddenly hits her that this is why she had put this off for so long, because she knew that he would be gentle and reverent, that he would make her want so badly to love him. And she can't afford to do that again, now or ever.

He brushes up against the tender patch of nerves inside of her and she hooks her ankles at the small of his back, her fingernails digging into arms. The weight of him presses against her clitoris. A few more strokes and she's done for, sobbing his name as her body spasms around his.

He follows right after and everything is warm and wet. He rolls off of her, still too breathless to speak. After a long moment, he pulls her against him, pressing a kiss to her forehead with his eyes squeezed shut.

She thinks about asking him to keep this private, not a secret, exactly, just something between them. But, she thinks as she watches him drift off, to hell with the others. To hell with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers Initiative, and Fury. She doesn't care who knows. They've earned this; they _deserve_ it.

Fury lets them have the weekend, and they hole up together, only leaving his bed to find food or the bathroom or something to read while the other sleeps. Two days later, they're back in the field, swinging into battle side by side.

* * *

The missions don't let up; Fury keeps sending them out, over and over, until they both start to feel themselves crack under the strain. They punch and shoot and shout questions at a rotating cast of villains, then fall into bed together at the end of the day.

She teaches him how to swear in Russian and he makes her laugh with his poor pronunciation. They swap S.H.I.E.L.D. gossip. They spend their off hours at his apartment. She makes them piroshky in his kitchen.

She waits a full two weeks before she breaks out the ropes and blindfolds. She's surprised at how game he is, how willing he is to let her make him vulnerable, how much he trusts her. It's not her usual style, but on occasion, she still lets him make love to her like he did the first night, slow and tender, even though it makes her feel exposed, like her heart is beating outside of her chest for everyone – for _him_ – to see.

It's another week before Bruce asks Steve about Natasha, and he doesn't deny that they're together, at least he thinks they are, and word gets around. Tony is delighted, if only because he seems to have a never-ending stream of nicknames for them, most of which are pop culture references Steve doesn't understand. Clint doesn't talk to either of them for a month. Natasha never says a word against him to anyone, just lets him work through it on his own.

* * *

There's a second apocalypse, and a third and a fourth. Tony comes back and the five of them reassemble, keeping the world safe from its foes.

Bucky comes back, too; his head's turned right side up again, more or less, and he fights alongside them. It feels good – it feels _amazing_ – to look over and see him, just like the old days.

Steve sees the way Bucky and Natasha flow together, their nonverbal communication just as effective and subtle as the language he has invented with each of them, separately. He can't help the twist in his gut when he sees them together: their closeness, the intimacy and history they share.

After their latest fight, they drop Bucky off at S.H.I.E.L.D. and Natasha takes Steve back to her place. It's an empty, drafty loft. She has a TV on an overturned milk crate and a tower of books and a hot plate and a mattress on the floor with a lamp next to it.

She looks up at him sheepishly. She never brings anyone here and she knows how pitiful it looks.

"I just don't like to have a lot of things," she grumbles, bending down to turn on the light "I got tired of moving all this _stuff_ from place to place and—"

"You don't have to explain," he interrupts, "I like it."

She raises an eyebrow at him, but he's telling the truth. He gets it. It makes sense here, where life isn't filled with the cheap, plastic nonsense people of this century are so attracted to.

She leads him to her bathroom, a tiny, dingy space made better by hot water and dry fluffy towels. Showering together has become part of their post-battle ritual, something that feels comradely until one of them makes a move. This time, it's Steve who pulls her against him. He kisses her for a long time. When she feels him go hard against her hip, she moves to slide her hands between their bodies, but he steps away, leaving her alone in the shower while he towels off.

Natasha waits five minutes before she follows him.

When she comes out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped tight around her chest, he's sitting on her mattress, his legs bent up high. He's already changed into the sweats and t-shirt from the bag he always carries with him.

"What the hell?" she growls. It's easier to be frustrated and angry than confused.

He just looks up at her, his blue eyes cloudy and distant.

"It's okay if you still love him."

She huffs, and sits down next to him, her brow furrowed, her lips slightly parted. He knows that she didn't hear what he said, she heard what he wanted to say: _It's okay if you love him instead of me._

"That's not…It's more complicated than that," she murmurs, barely audible, her eyes on the floor.

It's always this way between them. As brutally honest as she can be, there's a part of her that never says what she means. She still keeps – will always keep – part of herself hidden and, he supposes, so will he. But they're getting better at figuring each other out.

Steve reaches over and takes her hand in his. She knows he's looking at her, waiting for her to keep going, but she keeps her eyes down and chastises herself for her own cowardice. She's going to tell him, she decides. She's really going to.

"Before him, I had never been with anyone else. Not like that."

Steve cringes a little. He didn't know, and for a second he can't believe he never guessed that Bucky had been her first.

"He's a part of me," she looks up and her hand curls around the back of his head, forcing him to look at her, "So are you."

"I know," he says quietly, "He's…for me, too."

She tries to say something else, but her voice cracks and the sound of it floors him. He pulls her against them and says enough for them both. He tells her how he thinks about her (all the time), and how he wants to be with her (every minute), and how he's hers, hers, _hers_.

He stops short of telling her the whole truth: that he's completely, miserably, dangerously in love with her. He doesn't want her to feel like she has to say it back. He doesn't want her to worry that he'd fall apart if she didn't love him (even if he would).

She reaches for him, wraps herself – arms, legs, heart – around him so tight she's all but climbing inside him. He pulls her onto his lap and pushes the towel away. Her hands dive between them and she finds him still hard under his sweats, even though they've barely done anything yet. Just talking about what he feels for her lights him up from the inside out.

She shoves the fabric out of the way and strokes him until he pants her name, one calloused palm jerking up to cup one of her breasts.

"_Now_, Nat," he groans and lifts and lowers her hips over his.

He fills her completely and for a moment, neither of them move. It's what she needs, what they've both needed since the first night she fell asleep next to him. She touches her forehead to his.

"I—" she gasps.

"You don't have to say—" he starts, but she rolls her hips against his and it renders him mercifully speechless.

"This is so big. What we have. I don't know what to do with it."

He runs a hand across her hair, "I know."

Steve leans up to kiss her neck, and without his eyes on her, she feels a little bolder. Her arms fold around his shoulders; her hips rock against him and he surges up. He brings one of his hands to the place where their bodies are joined, his fingers tracing slow, deliberate circles across her clit.

"I just want it to be us. Like this. For…for as long as we want it. Okay?" Her breath is hot by his ear. Steve's heart shoots up to lodge in his throat.

He just nods, because it's all he can trust himself to do. If this is the most she ever says to him, it's enough.

They spend a long night together, and when they step out onto the street in the bright light of the next day, everything is different. As they walk back to headquarters, her hand slips into his, and, for a little while, nothing is wrong.


	2. Where the Clouds Never Go Away

_**Notes**:_ This is just a bunch of plotless fluff. Hope you like it. Please leave a review if you feel so inclined.

* * *

_Four be the things I am wiser to know:_

_Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe._

_Four be the things I'd been better without:_

_Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt._

_Three be the things I shall never attain:_

_Envy, content, and sufficient champagne._

_Three be the things I shall have till I die:_

_Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye._

_ -_ Inventory_, by Dorothy Parker_

* * *

They're scattered when the signal comes in from Fury to link up on video feed at their respective headquarters – Steve's in Berlin, Natasha and Bucky's in Kiev, Tony's in Los Angeles, Thor's in Albuquerque, and Bruce and Clint's in New York.

Fury tells them they'll be meeting up in London – all except Bucky, who will carry on in Kiev. He runs through the mission: manning a surveillance unit outside the heavily-bugged apartment of Antonin Dobrev, the notoriously violent head of an international smuggling ring, a target far out of the purview of average S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

"Stark and Barton have first shift," Fury barks at them through the feed, "Rogers and Romanoff second, Thor and Banner third." His expression darkens for a moment, "_Anyone_ tries any funny business in my surveillance unit, they answer to me."

On the screen, Steve sees Natasha's eyebrow arch and her lips purse in annoyance. They both know he's talking to them; Fury hasn't really been on their side since they started getting too close last year. But Tony makes a crack about he and Clint keeping it in their pants, Bucky and Bruce laugh, and Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

In the past few weeks, Fury's been sending Natasha out with Bucky, and Steve out alone, but he doesn't mind it. She's the only one he would trust to take care of him. They've been apart for three weeks, and even the sight of her and Bucky on the video feed makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

After Bucky came back to them, after the tangled mess of his mind was sorted through, rinsed out, and put back together again by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s shrinks, Steve found out that they were still keeping him in his cell. Unable to stand the thought of him in that bright, sterile room, even with the doors unlocked, Steve invited (forced) him to move into his Brooklyn apartment. He tries not to give into false hopes for a return to anything resembling the life they shared together before the war, before the serum.

At least until they parted for this latest assignment, things had been tolerable – Bucky's still prone to long, blank stares that give Steve the creeps, and more than once Steve's had to wake him up from awful, screaming nightmares. But it's still so much better than not having him at all.

* * *

By the time Natasha arrives in London, by the time she gets to the rendezvous – Fury's surveillance van parked across the street from Dobrev's flat – she's had time for little more than a quick shower. On the long plane ride, during the shorter taxi ride, on the late-night walk to the rendezvous, she stubbornly turns all her thoughts to the mission. She doesn't think about Steve. She doesn't think about all the nights she's spent wishing he was in her bed, warm next to her, with his hand between her legs instead of hers. She doesn't.

She taps on the van's back door and hears the mechanical whir of a camera as it swivels to take her in. Tony opens the door and she steps in quickly, stooping to fit.

He gives a low whistle when he sees her face. One of her eyes is blacked. A shallow cut extends along the cheekbone below it. Before she can close the door behind her, Clint stands.

"This is my stop," he announces, stepping out onto the street. He gestures towards Natasha's black eye. "Nice shiner," he says gruffly, before he wanders off into the darkness.

As she takes the empty seat next to him, Tony pouts at her. "He hasn't been any fun since you started boinking the captain."

Natasha shrugs, staring at the monitors in front of her, "He'll get over it."

It's another five minutes before Steve knocks and steps into the van, a white plastic bag with red lettering in one hand. Tony chastises him for his tardiness and threatens him with imaginary demerits.

Natasha gives him an appraising look as he steps in and takes a seat next to her. He doesn't look any worse for the weeks he's spent in Berlin.

"Is that—" she reaches for the plastic bag before he can hand it to her. Natasha groans appreciatively as she pulls out cartons, opening each until she finds the one she knows was meant for her.

As she unceremoniously pulls out chopsticks and shoves them into the noodle-filled container in her hands, Steve rolls his eyes, "You're welcome."

He looks at her for a long moment; Tony watches him watch her, watches Steve's brow furrow and his eyes narrow.

"What the hell happened to your face?"

She shrugs and mumbles, her mouth full, "Somebody punched it."

Tony snorts and stands, bending over to fit in the low-ceilinged van. "Well," he says as he opens the back door and steps outside, "I'll leave you two lovebirds to your sweet nothings."

The double doors are barely closed when, alone with him, Natasha gives up the pretense of not needing him. She sets her noodles aside and straddles his lap. She kisses him hard, her mouth is warm and insistent, her tongue spicy-hot as it slides against his. Rolling his hips up, Steve grabs her hips to pull her down against him, the rough friction of denim and zippers making her muffle a moan against his mouth.

When she pulls back, her lipstick is gone, the color high on her cheeks, her hair tangled in his hands. Dimly, he knows what he must look like on Fury's all-seeing cameras: dazed and love-drugged, his mouth smeared with red. He runs the pad of his thumb along her lower lip and she sucks it into her mouth, making him gasp and shudder underneath her.

She tugs him back against her, her hands roaming across his shoulders. Pressing his face against her shoulder, Steve breathes her in deep. She smells like gunpowder and Chanel. She smells like home.

"I missed you," he murmurs, his voice muffled.

Natasha's jaw clenches. She hates it when he says things like that – things that make her want him so much she can hardly see straight.

"I…me too."

He glances up at her, his blue eyes hooded, his pupils blown black, "Did you, really?"

She gives his shoulder a smack. "Don't fish," she scolds before pressing her lips to his cheekbone, "You know I did."

"Where can we go?" he murmurs into the joint between her neck and shoulder, because all he can think about is getting her out of the tiny van, because he needs her too much and he hasn't been this hard in weeks, "All S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me was a closet at headquarters."

She smiles, her breath ruffles his hair, "Can't go anywhere right now. Fury's got us stuck here for four more hours."

He groans. It's the worst news he's gotten all day.

She kisses his forehead and moves back to her seat. He gives her a dark look as he pulls his jacket off his shoulders and over his lap. She smiles coquettishly and hands him a carton of takeout.

"How did it go out there?" he asks, unwrapping his chopsticks.

She gives him her usual careful, guarded look. The look she uses when she knows the truth will only worry him.

"We got the job done."

"Is he going to be okay on his own?" Just the thought of Bucky out there, alone, makes him anxious and heartsick.

"He'll be fine," she nods, and she sounds so sure he can't help but believe her.

They settle into their old, easy rhythm: he says stupid things to make her laugh, and she regales him with news about the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill is supposedly dating. The minutes tick by slowly, from midnight, to one, to two in the morning.

After an hour, Steve starts hoping Dobrev will wake up and do something, just to make him stop thinking about how much he wants to hold her. He starts to wonder if Fury – or maybe God – is testing him.

Around hour three, it happens. Dobrev wakes up, makes a few calls, and before they know it, his whole damn syndicate is on the video screens in front of them. Natasha radios the team, and they break it up with backup from S.H.I.E.L.D. The kind of chaos and mayhem that erupts is the kind Steve and Natasha have mastered together, and they fight back-to-back, taking heat from all sides.

In the end, of course, the good guys win; Dobrev and his cronies are taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the team heads back to headquarters.

In the middle of the fight, Dobrev clocked him hard, and, once they're back in the debriefing room, Steve lets Natasha fuss over the deep gash on his forehead until he sees Clint's hundred-yard stare. Suddenly self-conscious, Steve brushes her aside, tells her it'll heal on its own.

* * *

After the debriefing, Natasha tells him to grab his stuff, leads him out onto the street and into a taxi. When they pull up in front of the Ritz, Steve gives her a skeptical look.

"Fury put you up _here_?"

She smiles confidently, "Fury put _us_ up here. In case you didn't notice, we did pretty good back there. I told him we were worth it."

He can't help smiling back.

They storm through the empty lobby, picking up their keys and rushing up to their room, barely making it inside before pulling at each other's clothes and falling across the oversized bed in a tangle of limbs.

He's barely started, only just begun to work his hand between her legs, his mouth at her breast, when she goes off like a tea kettle, wrapping herself around him frantically, clenching against him, chanting his name. He smiles up at her, surprised, and she blushes.

"Told you I missed you."

They get three rounds in before dawn, take hot showers, and have two full English breakfasts sent up to their room. By eight-o-clock, they're fast asleep. They hang up on two wake up calls, turn off their cell phones, and refuse to answer the door when Fury practically knocks it down.

For a little while, at least, the world can wait.


	3. We Happy Few

**_Notes: _**This leg of the story overlaps timeline-wise with the previous two parts. About a quarter of the way through, at the mention of Bucky living with Steve, that's the end of Gone for Soldiers. The events following the reference to London about halfway through take place after Where the Clouds Never Go Away.

We're going to take a brief detour into Steve/Natasha/Bucky. I wouldn't call this story slash, but it does, in a not particularly explicit way, address sexual orientation as ambiguous and fluid, and I realize that that might not be everyone's cup of tea. I went into writing this whole thing with the idea that Steve, Natasha, and Bucky, with their interconnected pasts, are caught up in a messy tar pit of feels, and it's meant to come to a head here.

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed this story already! As always, if you feel so inclined, please leave a review. Aside from brightening up my day, it's always good to know these little stories are being enjoyed by somebody besides me.

* * *

_Beautiful, sobbing_

_high-geared fucking_

_and then to lie silently_

_like deer tracks in the _

_freshly-fallen snow beside_

_the one you love._

_That's all._

-_Deer Tracks_, Richard Brautigan

* * *

When she sees James Barnes for the first time under the bright lights in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interrogation room, he calls her "Natalia." Just like the old days.

Just days earlier, Fury had sent her out with Steve, and Barnes spent three days tracking them. Three days deciding how best to kill them. He finally made his move once they were back in New York, which was his first mistake. Steve and Natasha called for backup and, after twelve hours of tearing apart Lower Manhattan, he failed, landing in a prison cell at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters.

Fury sends Natasha into the interrogation room to do what she does best: get answers, this time from the Winter Soldier. James gives her nothing, just swears at her in Russian and calls her a traitor.

His skin is clammy and pale. His eyes sunken and dark. Even though he's still covered in the filth of their last battle, even though his mind is sick, the sight of him is still enough to fill Natasha with an unbearable longing.

For all the memories the Red Room took from her, they didn't take everything. She remembers what it meant to be held by him, how it felt when he kissed her, how she trembled when he told her he loved her.

He sneers at her when he picks up on it. She's always been terrible at hiding herself from him.

"Never liked you," he spits.

She smiles wanly. "That's not how I remember it."

"Memory's no good," he looks her straight in the eye, "Not mine, not yours."

He refuses to talk to her after that, and she refuses to force him to, no matter what Fury orders. Even the thought of trying makes her feel broken inside. When Steve opens his arms to her, when she lets him in (too far), it's the only thing that makes her feel whole.

* * *

When S.H.I.E.L.D.'s psychiatrists finally break through, when they finally puncture and tear apart the thick membrane of amnesia the Red Room left him with, they call Natasha first.

She finds James in his cell, the restraints finally off. He sits on the edge of his cot, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the wall ahead of him. He doesn't even look up when she sits next to him, her hip grazing his.

"What do you remember?" Her voice is quiet. All she can see is his profile, his dark hair falling in a lank curtain across his cheek.

He shrugs, swallows, looks down at the floor.

"Everything, maybe. I remember you. I remember how…how things used to be."

She nods, trying to keep her face unreadable. He isn't looking at her, but she knows that on the other side of the two-way mirror overlooking his cell, none of this will go unobserved.

"I remember," he goes on, his voice hoarse, "I remember Steve. He's here, isn't he? He came—I think he came here, once."

He turns to her then, his dark eyes wide, imploring and open. It's a look she hasn't seen from him since the old days, when they fought and loved and lived for each other.

Natasha nods again, because no words can make it past the lump in her throat.

James jerks towards her and takes her face in his hands, his fingers – real and metallic – pushing into her hair. The sensation makes her shudder and lean into him in spite of herself. "Where did you go, when I lost you?" he asks, his voice small and strangled.

Natasha swallows hard and sets her jaw. Her eyes aren't filling with tears. They aren't.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. got me. Deprogrammed me. Got me out and wouldn't let me look back."

He nods; his gaze, hard and distant, drifts somewhere over her shoulder.

She listens to him breathe for a moment. His hands drift down to the sides of her neck and an ominous feeling prickles up her spine.

"James?"

His eyes snap back to hers and his face softens. His head dips and his lips press against her forehead, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. When his mouth presses fully against hers, she doesn't stop him, but she doesn't let herself melt against him, even if a part of her wants to.

He senses her hesitation and pulls away, keeping his face inches away from hers.

"Everything's so mixed up."

She sighs and wraps her arms around his shoulders. She doesn't care who sees.

"I know."

* * *

Steve visits him the next day.

"Bucky?" he ventures, as he steps into the cell.

Bucky stands and looks straight at him. There must be something like recognition in his eyes, because Steve crosses the room in an instant, and suddenly his arms are around him.

It knocks the wind out of him. It was one thing to be embraced by Natasha, who had been part of his life after the fall, who had loved the Winter Soldier, but Steve belongs to Bucky Barnes, someone he only just remembered existed.

It feels wrong, the feeling of Steve's arms around him, one hand cradling the back of his head. It feels like he's stepped into a life that's too good for him, a life that was taken away from him for a reason.

When Steve pulls back, holding him by the shoulders, his eyes are red, but dry.

He stays for an hour, until another migraine hits and Bucky has to lie down. The last thing he remembers before his vision blurs out is Steve above him, pressing a cool washcloth to his forehead, one warm hand folded in his. Steve bends over him, his breath hot by his ear. His voice is barely a whisper.

"Thank you for coming back."

His tone is heavy and thick, like he's on the verge of tears. But Bucky knows that wouldn't happen. He's seen Steve Rogers get beat up, get orphaned, get knocked down a million times. He's never once seen him cry.

* * *

Steve moves him into his apartment in Brooklyn, and Bucky can't remember a time when he lived in such a nice place, with gleaming hardwood floors and a big kitchen and a huge bed with clean sheets.

It takes getting used to, for both of them. Steve's as fastidious as Bucky remembers (now) and he's too used to living in the cramped and crowded Moscow _kommunalka_ where he spent his unfrozen years.

Bucky keeps waking up with Steve warm over him, his big hands on either side of his face, his worried eyes, dark in the dim light, fixed on his. He doesn't remember the nightmares, like always, but waking up with Steve close sure as hell beats waking up sweaty and scared and alone in his cell.

The way Steve says his name, the way he pushes his hair, damp with sweat, off of his forehead makes his heart jump. Bucky tries not to think about how good it makes him feel, because Steve isn't like that, isn't like _him_.

Bucky spends hours, days, trying not to remember what they meant to him, Natalia and Steve. In the few moments they've spent together, usually in briefings or debriefings, or in the heat of battle, he can tell something has happened between them. He wishes he could be happy for them, because he wants so badly for them to be happy.

* * *

Steve may be a lot more modern than he was when he first woke up, but he'll still never let Natasha see him cry. He knows she won't think less of him, but he holds it back anyway. When it gets to be too much, when Bucky's unintelligible mumblings and blank stares overwhelm him, when the torn up victims and unrelenting enemies push him over the edge, he hides himself from her. He lets himself let go, lets choked, tearless sobs rip through his chest in the relative privacy of empty S.H.I.E.L.D. storage closets or his locked bedroom or abandoned alleyways.

With Bucky in his apartment, they take up the habit of lunchtime assignations at Natasha's loft. It's after the team defeats the latest in an increasingly long line of potentially earth-ending enemies, after Bucky, Tony, and Thor head out for a celebratory beer, when they find themselves at Steve's instead.

They don't bother showering, just peel off what's left of their uniforms and wrap themselves around each other, still covered in dried sweat and the grime of battle.  
He backs her up and pins her against a wall, two hands on her hips lifting her until her legs lock around his waist and she sinks down onto his hard length. He sighs against her neck. When he's with her, really with her, it's easier to forget about the pain and panic that chase him.

He rocks against her, slow at first, then faster, until her hips are pounding against the wall at her back. She clutches him against her, squeezing him with her arms and thighs. She's spent the afternoon watching him nearly get killed a dozen times and just the thought of losing him makes her feel wild and desperate. Blood from a now-healed wound is still caked along the side of his face, matting his hair. When she kisses him, he tastes like copper.

His hips snap against hers, the quiet, empty room filled with their soft gasps and the wet, sucking sound of their bodies joining together. He brings a hand between their bodies, his other arm wrapped around her, holding her up. His fingers strum her clit and she feels every nerve in her body tighten.

"Don't go. Don't go," she sobs against his shoulder, her voice ragged and strung out, "_Don't leave me_."

Her vision swims as her climax rushes over her, and she dimly registers the hoarse shout he gives as he comes, too. In the wake of it, panting and dirty and sweaty, his knees buckle and he leans them against the wall for support.

When she looks at him, his eyes are red-rimmed and bleary. She brings a hand up to his cheek and her fingers come away wet and red, the dried blood there loosened by tears.

He doesn't say anything, just slides out of her, sets her down, and pulls her into the bathroom. He turns on the water, barely waiting for it to warm up before he pushes her in and follows close behind. He puts his head under the hot spray, scrubbing at his face until it's red and clean and definitely not tear-stained.

When he turns back to her, he wraps his arms around her waist.

"Never gonna leave you," he says against the side of her neck, "_Never_. Never. 'M gonna make you sick of me."

She smiles, her fingers tracing the muscles in his shoulders.

"Take me to bed."

He leans back and grins, and makes quick work of washing them both down. In ten minutes, he has her in his bed, under him, her hands in his hair as he works his way down her body. She smells like soap and shampoo and Natasha.

As he settles between her thighs, pressing a kiss to soft flesh on the inside of one knee, he sighs gratefully. He loves her like this: laid out, laid open, stripped down and ready for him. He shifts forward, his tongue pressing flat against her clit, and she shudders. For all that they're soldiers, warriors, and spies, with his mouth between her legs, they're only human.

Afterwards, Steve pulls her against him, fitting her against his side, her cheek pressed into his chest.

He laughs suddenly, his chest shaking underneath her head, "How do you always know what I need?"

The words bubble up in her throat with such force, she nearly says them: _Because I love you_.

Her stomach drops. It isn't good. It's very bad. Because it's completely true.

"Natasha?"

She looks up at him and Steve sees it in her eyes: the cagey, defensive look she gets when he gets too close. It turns his stomach. They've been partners, been lovers, for so long now, and the strain of holding himself back, of worrying about what it would mean if he tipped his hand, wears him out. He decides, right then, that he won't do it anymore.

He turns towards her, pulling her against him.

"I love you," he whispers against the side of her neck. He moves over her, his thigh sliding between hers.

She's not an idiot; she's seen the way he looks at her, and knows he's been ready to say it for a long time. But to say it now, when she's so overwhelmed by her own feelings, when she's trying so hard to fight them down, is nearly more than she can handle.

Suddenly, her hands are trembling; her teeth are chattering, even though he's warm over her. "Steve—" she gets out, but he shakes his head and covers her mouth with his. She kisses him back frantically, her fingers in his hair, her legs wrapping around his hips, and she hopes it says everything she can't.

* * *

Bucky never sees Natalia at the apartment, but there are signs of her everywhere: the scent of her perfume in Steve's bedroom, a tampon wrapper in the bathroom garbage can, a lipstick ring on a dirty coffee cup in the sink.

It's a sleepless night when Bucky finally spots her, and even then, it's not something he's supposed to see. He's treading quietly down the hall towards the kitchen, in search of something to distract himself from his wakefulness, when he hears them in Steve's bedroom.

Steve leaves his door cracked open to listen for Bucky's nightmares and through the gap, Bucky can see them: their naked bodies illuminated in yellow street-light as it filters through his curtains. Natalia's arms, slender but strong, are curled around his bare back, her legs bent up around his waist. Steve moves above her, pushing into her in a deep stroke that makes her head tilt back and her mouth fall open, her red hair spread across Steve's pillow. Steve lowers his mouth to her exposed neck and she curls around him tighter. They are nearly silent, just panting together quietly.

Bucky watches them for a while, the two people he has loved (wanted, needed) most, who found each other without him. He has never felt so alone.

The first time it happened, it's easy to explain away. He hadn't meant to see them, hadn't even known Natalia was there. The second time is harder to justify.

He doesn't know why he does it – why he walks silently down Steve's hallway again after jerking awake, a silent cry strangled in his throat. He usually doesn't remember his nightmares, he usually wakes up blank, gasping, and tearing at the sheets. But he remembers these ones, if only because they're new.

He dreams about the helpless, desperate calls of the dying at Azzano, where he thought for the first time that he'd never see Steve again. He dreams about waking up on an operating table with Steve over him, babbling what he hopes is his name, rank, and serial number. He dreams about running through a forest in the rain, following Steve, his dog tags scraping against his chest as fiery explosions rock the earth under him. He dreams about falling. When he finally wakes up, he knows that these nightmares are even worse because they aren't nightmares at all – they're memories.

Through the crack in the door, he sees Steve on the bed, sitting back on his heels, his back facing him. Natalia straddles his lap, her arms around his shoulders as she rocks up and down. Steve moans softly against her chest, and the sound rips through Bucky. All at once, he wants _him_, he wants _her_, he wants to take comfort in both of them, like he used to.

The floorboard beneath his foot creaks and Natalia looks up, over Steve's shoulder. She meets his eyes and even though the look she gives him is tender and understanding, he feels a wave of shame wash over him. He has no right to be there, no right to stand there, hard and wanting and filled with love. Not when he's been who he's been. Not when he's done what he's done.

She pauses just long enough for Steve to notice something amiss, and he looks up, follows her gaze, and looks back. Bucky just barely hears Steve say his name, then he's gone, back down the hall, back in his room, tearing at his hair.

He hopes Steve won't follow him, and he doesn't. Through the antiquated, paper-thin walls, he can hear Natalia talking, but can't make out her words.

When he ventures back out in the morning, far too early for even Steve to be awake, he sees them one more time, fast asleep and wrapped around each other, her head on his shoulder. Bucky ignores the hard pit in his stomach and turns into the bathroom.

* * *

Natasha sees the way Bucky looks at him. She sees his longing, his self-loathing and denial. She sees the way Steve is around him: hesitant, reticent, unsure.

At the Red Room, James had a widely-known reputation as a sexual omnivore, and she starts to wonder how much of that was part of the Winter Soldier, and how much came from Bucky Barnes. She thinks about what Steve has told him already: what Bucky meant to him, the life they shared. She wonders how far it went.

* * *

Fury sends Bucky to Kiev with Natasha, and working with her again, one-on-one like the old days, makes something inside him heal over.

She finds him in their hotel bar one night, cradling a lowball glass of whisky between his hands.

He gives her a brusque nod as she sits next to him and orders.

"Tell me about you and Steve."

He looks over at her.

"What do you mean?"

She raises her eyebrows expectantly and he sighs and shrugs his shoulders. The gesture is so familiar, so like something that Steve would do, and in an instant she's reminded of how much she's missed him since they've been in the field.

"He's a good guy," he starts, "We grew up together. Like brothers." He looks at his hands.

"Brothers?" her voice is soft and sympathetic. She knows it's more.

He scowls and points a finger at her. "Don't you try any of that Black Widow bullshit on me, Romanoff," he jerks his thumb back towards himself, "I am an impenetrable fortress. No way you're getting in here."

She smirks and his bravado falters for a moment. It's laughably untrue.

They sit together for a while longer, until the bar is empty and they're the only ones still downing drinks. They talk about the old days, the old fights. When they stumble up to their rooms, when he tries to follow her in to hers, she marches him down the hall to his door.

"Worth a shot," he tells her, flashing a lopsided grin and pulling out his room key.

She lets him kiss her cheek goodnight before she shoves him inside and pulls the door shut.

* * *

After Steve and Natasha get back from London and Bucky gets back from Kiev, Fury sends Natasha out into the field for a month, and Steve focuses all his efforts on Bucky.

His nightmares just get worse, until he's jolting wake every night. After a few nights of being woken up by his incoherent shouts and rushing in to shake him awake, Steve, rather unceremoniously, moves in.

It's the fifth night when Bucky shouts himself awake, panting and sweaty, with Steve by his side. It's the fifth night when Steve slides under the covers next to him.

Steve hasn't forgotten about how Bucky used to crawl into his bed when he was sick or beat up or cold, and what it meant to feel the warm press of him, stable and safe. And, he realizes, maybe that's why it means something when Natasha does it, too.

He tries not to think too much about the times that came before, though, in their tiny, tenement apartment in Brooklyn. When the nights were cold, or when he woke himself up wheezing uncontrollably, when Bucky would slide under the covers next to him, one hand spread warm across his chest. There were only a couple of times when things got confusing, when they woke up tangled up in the sheets and each other. Times when Steve's chest ached to see Bucky, sleeping and peaceful and warm next to him.

Steve wonders idly if Bucky remembers what that felt like. He'd never felt that way about anyone else, until Peggy.

He spreads his hand across Bucky's still-heaving chest.

"Breathe," he commands, just like Bucky used to during his asthma attacks. When Bucky looks over at him, his face barely visible in the dark, Steve smiles; Bucky's heart stops. Steve can't know what he's doing; can't know the effect he's having. But maybe he can.

After a while, Bucky's breathing slows. Steve's been still for so long, he's sure he's fallen asleep. But then he shifts, his hand sliding down into Bucky's.

"I thought I lost you," he murmurs, and Bucky has to strain to hear him, "When you fell. I thought—"

"I'm here now," Bucky interrupts, "No sense regretting anything."

Steve brings his other hand, the hand that isn't tangled up in Bucky's fingers, up to the side of his face.

"You going to stick around this time?" he asks. His tone is casual, but his thumb strokes the stubble on his cheek. Bucky nods and clenches his jaw against the urge to move closer.

They fall asleep with Bucky's hand still folded in Steve's.

* * *

It happens again. And again and again. Bucky starts to get used to falling asleep with Steve, gets used to knowing that no matter what bureaucratic nonsense S.H.I.E.L.D. throws at them, at the end of the day he'll have pizza and cold beer with Steve. At the end of the day he'll get to fall asleep beside him.

Whenever Steve thinks about it, whenever he _lets_ himself think about it, something in his chest clenches. He can't help feeling guilty, because he's the one who lets Captain America get tied to his bedposts by the Black Widow and fall asleep on the Winter Soldier's shoulder. And, of course, there's the other thing.

Steve knew of guys who didn't like girls, back in school, back in the service, but he knows this isn't that. He loves Natasha, loves her body, loves what they do together. This is something else. He wonders if it's possible to just love people. He wonders if sometimes it doesn't matter what type of body someone is in.

On the morning Natasha comes back, Bucky hears the front door click open and suddenly he's wide-awake. But the gentle padding of feet, the almost silent shuffling, tells him that it's her. He lets himself feel surprised for a moment, not that Steve gave her a key, but that she accepted it. Beside him, Steve snores softly, turning his face into Bucky's shoulder.

It seems like a long time before she finally finds her way into his bedroom. When she sees Bucky, she smirks, one eyebrow lifting, and he looks back at her defiantly. A part of this might be hers, but it's his, too. Steve sleeps on, and Bucky can't help thinking what a terrible spy he'd make, sleeping with both eyes so firmly closed.

Natasha shrugs out of her jacket and shirt; she steps out of her shoes and jeans, leaving everything in a pile on the floor. When she reaches behind her to unclasp her bra, sending it, too, to the floor, the sight of her sends a rush of blood to his groin. Natasha rolls her eyes at the hungry look he gives her.

She leaves her underwear on – plain, white, and cotton – and saunters to Steve's side of the bed. Bucky remembers how she hates lingerie, how she only ever wears it for missions when she thinks it's what her mark wants. He remembers how practical she is, how straightforward and unaffected.

Natasha slides into bed behind Steve, her arms wrapping around the gentle slope of his waist, pulling her body tight against his. Steve murmurs something into Bucky's shoulder, then jerks awake, his hand covering Natasha's where it sits on his stomach. Bucky looks at him, but Steve can't seem to meet his eyes.

"Nat—" he starts, but she slides her body up along his and puts her chin on his shoulder.

"It's okay," she whispers. She slides her hand out from under his, lifting her fingers to trace Bucky's collarbone. She presses a kiss to Steve's shoulder and shifts again, her head on his pillow."We're all here, now."

* * *

Steve usually sleeps between them, his head on Bucky's shoulder with Natasha's arm slung around his waist. For a long week, they live in this delicate balance: touching, but being careful not to touch too much. Feeling, but not too much.

Natasha sees everything they're doing: sees how they pretend that Bucky's only there because Steve forced him to move in, that Steve's only there to chase away Bucky's nightmares, and that Natasha's only there because of Steve. They pretend that none of this has anything to do with what any of them wants.

In the end, it's Natasha who orchestrates it, because she sees that the three of them need some managing, and, frankly, all their furtive looks and repressed desires and half-spoken apologies make her want to shoot something.

She crawls between them one night after the lights have gone out, which is already a break from what has become their normal position. Even with Bucky there, she sleeps nearly-naked, completely aware of the effect it has on both of them.

She slides her body next to Steve's, with Bucky at her back. She glances back at him, granting him permission without saying a word.

She kisses Steve, long and slow and thorough. Through half-lidded eyes, he can see Bucky behind her, his mouth moving along the nape of her neck, her shoulders, his hand tracing her side. He hesitates for a moment. Part of him thinks he should leave them alone, because he would give them anything and maybe what they want is to be together. But Natasha's hand is curled around the back of his neck and Bucky shifts closer to her, pressing them all closer together. He slides his real arm around Natasha's waist, brushing Steve's bare stomach. The drag of Bucky's skin against his, coupled with the hot, wet press of Natasha's tongue along the tendons in his neck, makes him shudder, makes a jolt of electricity shoot straight to his groin.

Natasha pulls back, looks him square in the eye, and it tells him everything. _This is good_ she says. _This isn't wrong._

She lowers her eyes and her hand, sliding her fingers into the waistband of his boxers. She looks up at him again, and behind her he can see Bucky looking at him, too. They're saying the same thing: _Let's have this, all together._

It shocks him how much he wants it. How much he wants to be that close to both of them.

Giving in to them feels like coming home.

* * *

When he wakes up, the angle of the shadows across the bed tell him it must be nearly noon. Bucky's gone, but a hand on the still-warm depression in the mattress next to him tells him that he hasn't been gone long. He can hear the shower running down the hall.

As usual, Natasha has woken up before him, and she's sitting up next to him, leaning against the headboard, the _New York Times_ spread across her lap. The sight of her, still naked, her pale skin covered in love bites, red hair tangled and falling loose around her shoulders, would turn him on if he weren't already so wrung out.

"That was something, last night," he says, blushing a little.

She looks over at him, surprised that he's awake, and smiles. "It was," she says, touching his cheek lightly. Considering all the things she's seen him do, including all the things he's done just in the last few hours, it always surprises her that he still has blushes in him.

"It doesn't change anything, does it? With us, I mean." His fingers trace up and down her arm.

She shakes her head and moves her arm around him, her fingers stroking the short hair at the nape of his neck.

Bucky enters, dressed in boxers, with damp hair and full hands. He hands Natasha a plate of buttered toast and a mug of black tea, and brings his own mug up for a sip. Like Natasha, he's covered in little purpled bruises and pink scratches. For all their soft feelings, they certainly weren't gentle with each other.

He grins and holds his mug aloft. It's the atrocity Tony gave him last Christmas - part of the unlicensed Avengers merchandise that's so easy to find in every tacky gift shop in Times Square. It's emblazoned with an image of Steve in full Captain America regalia, paired with a corny catchphrase invented on Madison Avenue.

"It was a gift," Steve grumbles, and next to him, Natasha laughs.

Bucky disappears for a moment and comes back with a third mug, handing it to Steve and stretching out next to him. Steve breathes a sigh of relief when he discovers that it's coffee instead of tea.

"Your usual," Natasha deadpans, handing Bucky the comics. He snorts and rolls his eyes, reaching across Steve for the sports section. Natasha thumbs through the paper for a moment, then hands Steve the local news while she opens the international section across her lap.

After the night before, Steve knows they're all going to need a real breakfast soon, and he silently waffles between the diner down the street and the restaurant around the block.

But for now, sitting in bed with Bucky and Natasha is quiet and domestic and just what he needs. He settles back against the pillows and sips his coffee, and, for a little while, everything is perfect.


	4. And the Livin' Is Easy

_**Notes:**_This is just a little summery fluff. Hope you enjoy. Reviews are always appreciated.

* * *

Bucky and Steve both hate the cold, for reasons that are both stunningly obvious and sadly similar. They're both at their most alive, their most vibrant and ebullient, in summertime. Natasha finds the heat oppressive and uncomfortable, but they bask in it, dragging her along for walks through the city, trips to Coney Island, and long lunch breaks in Central Park.

It's easier to keep a low profile in the summer, too, when baseball caps and dark sunglasses don't raise any suspicions. After the battle in New York, and all the battles that followed, Steve's star has risen, much to his chagrin. He doesn't mind the autograph seekers and fans who follow him, not really, but he craves the relative anonymity that Bucky and Natasha still enjoy.

They go up to the roof of Stark Tower every night, because it's the best place in the city to watch the sun set. Tony has a full set of patio furniture there, but so far they've been alone every night.

Natasha kicks off her shoes and sits on a cushioned bench with Steve and Bucky on either side of her. She settles back against Steve's shoulder, one of his arms around her waist, propping her feet up on James' lap. She's wearing a red sundress that's been driving Steve and Bucky crazy all day, and she arranges the skirt carefully around her.

Bucky pulls a bottle of vodka out of the canvas bag he carried there from Brooklyn, twists the cap off, takes a swig and passes it to Steve.

"Did you bring glasses?" Steve asks, one eyebrow raised.

Bucky sighs, gives him a look and thrusts the bottle into his hands. "When the hell did you get so dainty? Drink up."

Steve drinks and passes. Bucky lights a cigarette and offers it to Natasha, but she wrinkles her nose and he shrugs, taking a long drag.

They're quiet for a while, passing the bottle back and forth, the fading sunlight turning everything yellow and orange and red. Steve slides one of the thin straps of Natasha's dress down her arm, running his thumb across the soft, tanned skin of her shoulder.

"Mets're playing tomorrow, " Bucky says absently, his hand sliding up and down Natasha's calf, "We should get tickets."

Steve nods and tells him it's a good idea.

"Not the Yankees?" Natasha asks, and they shoot her identical, eviscerating looks.

She makes a purposefully goading argument about how all the teams do the same thing, anyway, and she smiles when they launch into a joint lecture about why the Yankees have been no-good punks since 1941. Bucky passes her the bottle and she takes a long pull, feeling a warm tingle spread through her chest.

Natasha hasn't been one for games, professionally played or not, for as long as she can remember, but she likes the idea going with them. She'd let them buy her beer and hot dogs and take turns explaining the rules to her.

In low tones, Bucky sings a few bars of _Take Me Out to the Ballgame_, grinning puckishly and running his fingers along the soles of Natasha's bare feet. She throws her head back onto Steve's shoulder and laughs, squirming. She tries to pull her legs away, but he catches her by the ankles and she laughs louder. She's genuine and open, just like she always is when the three of them are together. Steve can't help smiling, too, because they're both so damn beautiful and he's so damn lucky.

The door behind them creaks open and they freeze. In one fluid movement, Bucky reaches for the holster at the small of his back. Steve watches as Natasha straightens and slides up the hem of her dress to the knife strapped to her thigh, in solidarity with Bucky's suspicion. He wants to roll his eyes at their paranoia, but he knows that it comes from years of running and it's nothing to sniff at.

They both relax when Tony appears, followed by Pepper, Bruce, and Betty, a dark-haired woman Steve barely knows, but who has Bruce wrapped around her little finger. The four of them are talking and laughing, Pepper and Betty stumbling like they've had a few drinks already. Natasha looks back at Steve, irritation plain on her face. They're about to be crashed by a double date.

Tony pulls a pair of yellow-lensed sunglasses out of his pocket and looks up at them in surprise.

Bruce, amiable as always, waves and smiles at them, and Steve returns the gesture.

"How did you guys get up here?" Tony asks when they get close enough, "I didn't think I gave you this clearance."

Bucky grins and holds up a passcard that definitely doesn't have his picture on it.

Pepper's jaw falls open, "I thought I lost that."

Bucky snatches it away as she reaches for it. "You got a replacement though, right?" he looks up at her innocently, "So we'll just keep this one."

Pepper frowns and crosses her arms. She shoots Steve a look, like he's supposed to be the moral center of the group and keep Bucky in line, but he just shrugs and holds up his hands.

As the four of them take seats, Steve looks down and sees that Bruce is carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a cluster of glasses in the other.

"I only have four-," he starts, but Bucky stops him. He lifts the bottle of vodka with his metal hand, gleaming in the lowering light, "We're taken care of."

Tony's eyebrows shoot up. "Why do I feel like we just walked behind the bleachers and found out where the bad kids smoke pot?"

Natasha chuckles and Bucky passes the bottle to her. The way she's melting against him tells Steve she's already feeling its effects.

They sit together quietly, the four of them sipping wine while the three of them pass vodka back and forth. Bucky lights up another cigarette. Steve tries to refuse the bottle on his turn, because so far he's kept his un-Captain American behavior to the privacy of their little group and maybe it should stay that way. But Bucky frowns at him, and he gives in. He knows neither of them, especially Bucky, will ever let him pretend to be anything other than who he is.

It's awkward at first, but it gets easier. Bucky's always been charming, and now that he's thawed out, that's still the same. He regales the little group with embarrassing stories about he and Steve's misspent youth, and about what Manhattan used to be like.

The sun dips below the horizon, which is usually when the three of them head back to Brooklyn, but Tony murmurs a command to JARVIS and the sitting area illuminates in a soft glow.

In the dim light, Steve sees Tony watch them, sees him look at Bucky's hand on Natasha's ankle and Steve's arm around her waist. Steve can see the wheels turning behind his dark eyes, and he knows that by the end of the night he'll have drawn some untoward (and not entirely inaccurate) conclusions.

But somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Because he doesn't feel particularly inclined to pretend like the three of them aren't doing what they're doing, like they aren't going to fall into bed together as soon as they get home, like he isn't looking forward to it.

They all sit together for a little while longer. As Natasha, Steve, and Bucky, make their way back downstairs, on their way back to the subway, Steve walks between them, Natasha's hand in his and Bucky's arm slung around his shoulders.

There's no pretending that the two of them don't mean the world to him.


	5. All the Old Familiar Places

**_Notes: _**This is heavily influenced by _Steve Rogers' American Captain: A Diary Comic_, which is one of the best things I have ever seen produced in any fandom, ever. We can't post links in fics, but I highly HIGHLY recommend Googling it if you are at all a fan of Steve Rogers.

There is a PWP chapter of this that occurs between this chapter and the last one. I am not posting it here, just because it's pretty smutty (for me) and there are just a lot of young people on this site. Basically, the idea of posting it here made me feel old and lecherous. But it _is_ posted on Archive of Our Own and there's a link in my profile for anyone who's interested.

As always, thanks for reading, and reviews are always appreciated.

* * *

_The blast opens the side of the train car and the cold air that rushes in hits Steve's face like a slap. He's on the ground when he sees Bucky pick up the shield. The train thunders underneath them. There's a flash of blue light and he's gone, out the gaping hole, and for a second he thinks Bucky's just gone forever._

_Steve launches himself towards the opening anyway, and sees Bucky clinging to the railing, desperate and terrified. Bucky reaches and the railing gives way. Steve can do nothing but watch him fall, all the way down, his helpless scream echoing through the ravine._

* * *

"You okay, Cap?"

Clint's voice is quiet and unexpected next to him. Steve has long since come to terms with the fact that Clint won't talk to him outside of battle or training, and just an hour earlier, he had bristled and crossed his arms when Steve took the empty seat next to him.

Steve suddenly regains consciousness of his surroundings. He's in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s specially-designated Avengers Initiative briefing room, the team sitting around a giant glass-topped conference table while Fury drones on in front of a projected slideshow. He can feel beads of sweat pouring down his back under his shirt, his face and palms feel clammy, his head is swimming and his chest feels tight. He's sure he looks awful, and he's thankful that the lights are lowered.

He looks over at Clint, and sees the uncharacteristic concern in his eyes. He manages a brusque nod. He can feel Natasha's eyes on him from across the table.

"Excuse me," he gasps, mentally scrambling to avoid breaking down as he rushes from the room. He ignores Fury's call after him.

In his wake, a long pause settles on the room. Tony shifts uncomfortably; Fury shuffles through his notes.

From his seat next to her, Bucky looks over at Natasha.

"I got this," she murmurs, touching his knee under the table and slipping from the room.

She finds him in the hall, leaning against a wall, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents passing him by without notice. He's remarkably pale and struggling to catch his breath. If she didn't know him, she'd say he looked sick. She marches up to him, and sets her hand on his elbow.

"What's going on?"

He shakes his head, trying to rattle out the offending thoughts, "It's…It's…"

She knows what word he's looking for: _flashback_. She knows how he hates to use the vocabulary the psychiatrists at S.H.I.E.L.D. gave him, because he hates to think of himself as someone who needs their help (even as he encourages Bucky to keep all his appointments with them). But she knows what this is, because she's seen him go through it before.

She pulls him through the hallways of S.H.I.E.L.D., past the usual low-level gawkers and high-level hardasses. They pass by Maria Hill, and for a moment she seems like she wants to stop them, to ask them if they need help, but all Natasha can think is _get him out of here,_ and she shoves Steve into an elevator_. _The subway sounds like a terrible idea, so she takes a Cadillac from Fury's fleet.

"What happened?" she asks as she tears out of the underground parking garage.

His head is tilted back against the headrest; his eyes are squeezed shut. "Fury said…something. What was he talking about?"

"Sarkisian's crew is targeting trains. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s going to search all the passenger trains coming out of Athens for explosives."

"Hell," he runs his hand through his hair. "Bucky," he starts shakily, "When he…when he fell. There was a train."

"Ah."

For the rest of the drive back to his apartment, they're both silent.

* * *

When they get back to his place, he makes a beeline for the couch, sitting with his elbows on his knees, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. He's finally gotten control of his breathing, but the ache at the back of his throat won't go away.

"I'm going to call James."

He straightens, suddenly alert, one hand gripping the back of the couch as he turns to face her. "Don't—Don't tell him about what I told you. I don't want him to know I still think about that stuff. I…I don't think it'd be good for him."

She nods curtly and retreats into the kitchen.

Bucky answers on the first ring, like he's been waiting for her call. She tells him Steve's fine, just needs to lie down for a while. Nothing to worry about. But Bucky worries anyway

"I'll be right there," he announces.

"No," she tells him, more harshly than she had intended, "We're good here. I need you to make excuses and take notes. You know how he is; he'll want you to tell him everything tonight."

She hangs up before he can protest and heads back into the living room. He's still on the couch, staring at nothing.

"You want to be alone?" she asks as she sits next to him.

He looks at his hands, his eyes bleary and voice small, "No."

She reaches over and takes one of his hand between hers.

"It's not getting better, is it?" he asks, after a long silence, "The nightmares and…all the stuff? Bucky seems—Bucky seems better."

He almost sounds jealous. It's true: Bucky _is _better. His nightmares have dropped off, he talks more and drinks less.

She frowns. "_Bucky_ accepts the help that's offered him. And he's got _you_ to force him to go to counseling."

Steve frowns back at her.

They settle back against the cushions. Natasha makes coffee and Steve finds an old movie on TCM. Her phone keeps vibrating, though, and she keeps tapping on it like she's writing a book. He wonders if Bucky's checking in.

* * *

_need you to come to steve's. 521 2nd ave, brooklyn, apt 205. how soon can you be here?_

_Why?_

_he's having a rough day. could use your expertise._

_I'm not that kind of doctor._

_don't care. you owe me. please._

_Give me 30 minutes._

* * *

Steve's nearly drifted to sleep, curled against Natasha's shoulder, when a knock at the door startles him awake. She practically springs up from the couch to answer it. Steve follows her out of curiosity and finds Bruce standing in his threshold.

"I was just in the neighborhood—" he's explaining as he catches Steve's eye over her shoulder.

"You were in Brooklyn?" Steve counters, "What were you doing in Brooklyn?"

"I just…I come here sometimes."

Steve's eyebrow lifts skeptically, but he shrugs and steps aside so Bruce can come in.

"Actually, I was thinking we could go out," Bruce shifts from foot to foot and smiles, "It's nice out. You could show me your neighborhood."

Steve looks at him for a long moment, then at Natasha.

"You go," she says, "I have work to do."

Steve narrows his eyes at her, but shrugs, pulls his jacket off the hook by the door and follows Bruce out.

It's not bad, actually. The weather has already started to thaw into spring, and as they walk Bruce, surprisingly, does most of the talking, switching between his latest research and the litany of ridiculous stunts Tony's pulled just in the last few weeks. They get slices of pizza to-go and find a bench in Prospect Park.

"She's worried about you, you know. Natasha." Bruce says, folding his slice and taking a bite.

"I wish she wasn't."

"Hm," Bruce chews thoughtfully, "It's my experience that people who have people to care about them never appreciate it as much as they should."

Steve looks over at him and Bruce smiles, a little ruefully.

"She wants me to see the head shrinkers, like Bucky does."

"You don't want to?"

"I don't know." Steve takes a bite and the two of them stare at the grassy lawn ahead of them. "Do you think I need to?" he asks after a while.

Bruce shrugs, "Couldn't hurt, right?"

Steve smiles, a little lopsided. "Couldn't hurt."


	6. A Very Funny Proposition (After All)

**Notes**: Like a lot of this story, this is really a bunch of vignettes strung together. Hopefully it seems coherent enough. Also, I realize that I'm probably taking some artistic liberties with Catholicism. Hopefully it's nothing too egregious.

As an aside, Steve's (and everyone's) relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D. in this chapter is influenced by the very recent stuff coming out of the Comic-Con panel from the other day.

As always, hope you all like it. Reviews are certainly appreciated.

* * *

_Life's a very funny proposition, you can bet,_

_And no one's ever solved the problem properly as yet._

_Young for a day, then old and grey;_

_Like the rose that buds and blooms and fades and falls away,_

_Losing health to gain our wealth as through this dream we tour._

_Ev'rything's a guess and nothing's absolutely sure;_

_Battles exciting and fates we're fighting until the curtain falls._

_Life's a very funny proposition after all._

- George M. Cohan, _Life's a Very Funny Proposition After All_

* * *

Natasha has come to despise Fury's briefings. The ones he gives just to their little team are bad enough, but the briefings that include fifty other hand-selected S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are worse. They're interminable and dull, and, in the course of a single morning, Fury somehow manages to make larceny, murder, and terrorism sound humdrum and tedious.

She spends most of this morning's meeting watching her teammates through the crowd. She sees how Tony plays games on his phone, how Bruce tries not to fall asleep with his head in his hand, and how Clint rolls his eyes and stares out the window.

It always gives her a pang of regret to see Clint, though anymore their interactions are limited. The truth is that she misses him, misses the easy companionship they used to share, even as she realizes that that's probably gone forever. She knows that it was her own callousness with his feelings that drove him away, and, with Steve next to her and James sitting in the row behind him, the thought of that fills her with a sinking dread.

At the first break, Natasha sidles up to Steve next to the coffee cart. The room is full of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, so it's not too obvious when she leans against him ever so slightly, her arm brushing against his. She's been sitting next to him all morning, but the warm, subtle press of his side against hers does something to ease the ache inside her.

The briefing is set to last all day, but at the second break Natasha pulls Steve out of the room, down two different elevators, through the lobby, and onto the street. They move so fast, no one seems to notice their exit, even Bucky. After a few turns, Steve realizes they're going to her building. They've spent so much time at his place in Brooklyn, Steve had almost forgotten that she still had an apartment in Manhattan.

She leads him up five flights of stairs and pushes him inside her door. He barely has time to think before she's all over him, hands in his hair, tongue in his mouth, and all he can do is grab her by the waist and lift her against his chest to give her more access.

She's made some changes since the last time he was here: she's added a brass-barred headboard, a short bookcase, and a chair. But it's still as Spartan as it's always been, just like she likes it.

She doesn't give him much time to take in the new scenery, though. The curve of her hips fills his hands, and before long he's pressing hard against his zipper, his breathing growing ragged, his eyes turning glassy and bright.

"I don't know how much time you think we have until Fury figures out we're gone," he gasps, pulling himself away from her, "but I don't think it's enough time to do this justice."

She groans against the side of his neck, "Who cares. I've missed you."

He looks down at her. "I've been here all along."

Her brow furrows and she turns serious. "You know what I mean. I miss _just_ you."

Her arms tighten around his neck and his heart swells. He hates to admit it, but it's been a while since he felt like she was his girl.

He lets her lead him to her long-unused bed, lets her strap his wrists to her headboard with his belt and have her way with him. She teases him mercilessly with her hands and mouth, taking pride in the way his prone body tenses and bucks underneath her and, perhaps, taking too much pleasure in having him all to herself.

When she finally sinks down onto him, hot and slick and tight, leaning over him with her face close to his, he begs – _begs_ – her to untie him. When she does, when he gets his hands on her, he fights hard to keep control, and she goads him into letting go.

Afterwards, he pulls her against his chest, one big hand cradling her head while they both catch their breath.

"Do you do this with him, too? Alone?" He cranes his neck and looks down at her hesitantly, then presses on, "It's…It's okay if you do, I just—"

"I don't," she interrupts.

He looks at her for a long moment, then nods, pretending to understand.

"I'm sorry," he says, quietly and too respectfully, "I shouldn't have asked. It's not my business."

Her gorge rises. She frowns and grabs the back of his neck, forcing him to meet her eyes. She tries to keep the hard edge out of her voice.

"Listen. I know what he means to you. It's the same for me. But he and I are not the same as you and me. I'm not going to do this with him. Just you. Understand?"

He tells her he does, tells her it doesn't matter anyway. She sees what he thinks he's doing: taking what he can get and pretending like it's enough. She bristles; she hates the thought of him not knowing that he already has all of her. But the words she wants to say still stick in her throat. She wonders if she's even capable of telling him what he means to her. She wonders if she really _is_ broken.

"I love you," he tells her, as though he senses her struggle, "I love you," and then it's coming out of him in a torrent of unstoppable words. He chants it over and over while her hands run up and down his arms and her fingers trace his cheekbones, while his mouth travels from her jawline to her throat and back.

"Let's just sleep for a little while," she says when his voice has gone hoarse. Her arms are loose around his shoulders; his fingers are tracing the curved line of her waist.

He smirks, "It's eleven in the morning. We can sneak back in when they all come back from lunch."

She rolls her eyes at him and explains, with words and hands and lips that they aren't going back. And he gives in, because he always does, for her.

* * *

Bucky and Steve and Natasha have become a team. They work well together, and even Fury sees it. But he still has no compunctions about splitting them up.

It's June when Steve gets sent back to Berlin for a month, and Bucky and Natasha are left alone in his apartment. They try sleeping together – just sleeping – but they both know it doesn't work without Steve. They spend the evenings together, but Natasha goes back to her place in Manhattan at the end of the night. In the weeks before Steve left, her apartment had been the site of countless trysts, and she likes sleeping in a bed that still smells like her and him.

It's their third week alone together when Bucky finally brings it up – the change he's seen between him and her and her and Steve, the shift that's happened between all of them in the past few months. He can tell that something's brought them closer, and he guesses (correctly) that they've been meeting up without him. It doesn't bother him like he thought it would, because he knows now, with no doubts, that they love him. He knows that he has a place in their lives, whatever it may be.

Bucky and Natasha spend another summer watching the sun set from Stark Tower, even if they have to start the season without Steve. It's a warm evening, one of the first really warm evenings of the summer, and the two of them sit side-by-side, splitting a cigarette and taking occasional swigs from Bucky's flask. He looks over at Natalia. Her pale skin glows pink and orange in the fading light. He tells her what he's seen and sensed. She denies nothing.

"Whatever they did to us back at – back then, whatever they made me do, I loved you," he says, and she looks over at him with unreadable eyes, "I really did."

Her jaw clenches. "So did I."

He smiles at her fondly and swings an arm (his real arm) around her, resting it on the back of the bench behind her. The simplicity of this - his understanding, his acceptance – makes Natasha smile. If nothing else, James has always been good at understanding people, and knowing what they want.

"So, you and Steve. When's the happy day to be?"

Natasha rolls her eyes and looks back at the skyline. "It's not like that."

Bucky scoffs, "So you aren't in love with him?"

She glares at the horizon. She knows exactly what he's trying to do – get her to admit to something she can barely admit to herself.

He shifts closer to her, leans his head close to hers, and whispers, "You forget I know what Natalia Romanova looks like when she's in love."

She looks up at him sharply, almost shocked by his invocation of the girl she had been when he first knew her, when he trained her and loved her and made love to her. But before she can say anything more, he tells her that he's signed the lease for the empty apartment two floors down from Steve's.

She frowns at the news, but he just grins, bumps her hip with his, tells her they'll be neighbors, and tells her, with a lascivious wink, that she and Steve can borrow a cup of sugar anytime. He finally coaxes a smile out of her, and they sit together in silence until the world has gone dark around them.

When Steve comes back, Natasha tells him, and he accepts it with his usual quiet grace. She knows he'll miss Bucky, even though he'll still be close. She knows that, since he came back, he finds it hard to meet the end of things, no matter what they might be.

She hopes she'll be enough.

* * *

Steve disappears every Sunday morning. He pulls himself out of bed before she's awake, dresses, and leaves, sometimes for nearly the whole day. Every once in a while, Natasha senses him go, feels the rock of the mattress as he gets up or suddenly misses his warmth by her side.

When she picks up on the pattern, she rises quietly behind him one morning and trails him, though she doesn't know exactly why. When she follows him onto the subway, into the city, and all the way to the steps of St. Patrick's, she's dumfounded. She feels silly for pursuing him, when the answer was so obvious.

She stands in the back, in the shadows, and watches him. A few people recognize him, and he smiles and shakes their hands graciously, but he sits alone. He knows what to say and when to say it, right along with the crowd. He knows when to cross himself and when to kneel. But when the rest of them rise and form a single line to receive communion, he stays in his seat.

It's archaic and arcane and nothing she's ever believed in. But even from a distance, she sees how it comforts him. Sees how his shoulders soften. Sees how he spends more time looking at the vaulted ceilings and stained glass than at the deacon. She wonders if he's admiring the architecture or looking for God.

As the congregation files out, she doesn't hide anymore. She posts herself by the door, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched, until he spots her and smiles, unsurprised. He comes up to her with his hands in his pockets. His hair's neatly combed and he's wearing a tie; he looks like a choirboy, and nothing at all like the man Natasha knows him to be.

He tells her he's starving and leads her out onto the street and a few blocks over, into a café they've been to before. He orders his usual three breakfasts and she asks for black tea and toast.

"So. Church," she starts when their food arrives.

He kind of laughs and shrugs. "I guess so."

"Why that church?" she asks as Steve tears through his eggs, "Why not any of the churches in Brooklyn?"

He gives her an evaluative look, like he's wondering if he should answer or not.

Finally, he puts down his fork, looking out at the street to his right, squinting in the sunlight.

"My mother liked it there. Thought it was beautiful. She wished we could live in the city so we could go there all the time." He drops the "r" on "mother," like it's the one word he's kept his childhood accent for. "Plenty of money for the subway now, so…" he trails off, avoiding her eyes.

He's never talked about his mother before, or his childhood, and suddenly the conversation, hell, the whole morning, seems too intimate, like they've entered uncharted territory. When they pulled him out of the ice, she saw the old photos, the old records, and she knows well enough where he came from, how he was different. She can't let the past matter, not hers and not his, so she tries not to think about it: what he was like long before he was hers.

But suddenly it's all she _can_ think about.

"Why didn't you take communion with the rest of them?" It's starting to feel a little like an interrogation, and maybe it is.

He shrugs again, too casually, "You gotta be in a state of grace."

Her back straightens and her brow furrows. The implication sets her on edge. "Which is what, exactly?"

He looks up at her a little guiltily, "Just a Catholic thing." He rolls his eyes and grins, and she knows that means he doesn't want to talk about it.

Later, on the walk back, she pulls him into an empty alley and backs him up against a brick wall. Her hands wrap around his shoulders, the strength of her arms pulling him down towards her. He half expects her to be fiery, full of violent, bottomless passion, like she always is, but she's never what he expects her to be.

She kisses him like she hasn't kissed him since the beginning, back when they hadn't done anything but kiss. It's long, slow, and lingering. She's warm in his arms; her hair slides through his fingers like silk. It makes his head spin.

She pulls him close, pulls his face close to hers. She knows what she's going to do, the thing she's known she would do from the moment she followed him out of that church, and an irrational terror sweeps over her.

"I _love_ you."

Her heart races and her fists clench. Because _shit_ she's doing this all wrong, and how _dare_ she say that to him in a dark backalley that smells like piss and garbage and she can't tell if it's been seconds or minutes or hours since she said it, but he hasn't said anything back yet and that can't be a good thing.

He just looks at her for a long, torturous moment, searching her face, searching for words. Suddenly it seems like it's been a long time since anyone's said that to him.

"Me too," he finally manages, and his voice is quiet and awed, like he can't believe any of this is happening to him, "I love you, too."

She breathes a sigh of relief and smiles, soft and close-lipped. She looks at him so fondly and intimately, he feels like his heart might burst. "I know."

Before she lets him out of her grip, before they step back into the light of day, she yanks off his tie, unbuttons the top button of his shirt, and combs her hands through his hair.

* * *

Fury calls Steve and Natasha into his office, and it feels like being called to the carpet. It feels familiar.

Fury gestures to a spread of magazines on the desk in front of him: glossy trash splashed with long-lens photos of Steve and Natasha sitting on a park bench, his hand on her knee, their heads close together.

Steve raises an eyebrow. "You lettin' the gossips get to you, Sir?"

Natasha smirks and picks one of the magazines up, flipping through their photo spread with an appraising look on her face. The photographers haven't caught anything more than a few whispered words and clandestine touches; as Steve's fame has risen, they've been careful to manage themselves in public.

Fury smiles grimly. "Not exactly. The Council is more worried about this." He turns to a screen mounted to the wall, raises a remote, and starts a video. It's a clip from one of the odious, hysterical news programs Steve hates: a suit-clad anchor has himself worked up into a frenzy, practically foaming at the mouth, about the implications of Captain America's apparent relationship with a Soviet spy. He spews a lot of nonsense about state secrets and the Cold War and Bolshevism, until Natasha asks Fury to turn it off.

A long pause follows. Finally, Fury clears his throat.

"I'm shipping you two out 'til this blows over, to Paris where they could give a damn about _Captain America_," he sneers, "We've got our eye on an art smuggling ring."

"What about Agent Barnes?" Natasha asks in a low voice.

Fury tells them Bucky is already halfway to Buenos Aires with Maria Hill and Clint.

The looks they give him are matching and mutinous, but he just hands them briefing packets and dismisses them.

* * *

In Paris, they're both relieved to know that they still make a good team. With Natasha as his more sympathetic foil, Steve plays a surprisingly effective "bad cop," though at his size and with the right tone of voice, it's easy to be intimidating.

With the worst of the villains they capture, Steve doesn't mind being menacing, doesn't mind threatening them until they fold. But with lesser thugs, men and women who have fallen in with a bad crowd, Steve hates it. He tells Natasha that it makes him feel awful to yell at them and make them cower, but they always get the information they need, so the formula stays the same.

Whenever it happens, though, whenever Steve is called upon to intimidate and frighten, later, when they're back at the tiny Left Bank flat S.H.I.E.L.D. set them up in Natasha handles him with an unrelenting gentleness. She lets him fix her dinner and make love to her slowly. Because she knows that what he needs after that is a reminder that he isn't a bully; that he's still the good man he once promised to be.

* * *

Buenos Aires is sticky-hot and in between firefights all the three of them can do is lie in front of rickety fans with cold glass bottles of Coke. The drug ring Bucky, Clint, and Maria are tailing keeps them on their toes, though, and they get enough action to satisfy their more pugnacious appetites.

After he's spent two weeks watching her shoot and fight, threaten and interrogate, Maria piques Bucky's interest. He's always had a weakness for beautiful, bossy, brassy women who know their way around a gun. He and Steve have a lot in common that way.

The first time he kisses her, she punches him; nearly knocks his lights out. But if the Red Room taught him anything, it was to pick up on tells, and the split second when Maria leaned into him, her lips moving ever so slightly against his, tells him everything.

He saves her life – pulling her out of the way before one of the drug syndicate's goons can open fire – and she repays the favor twice over. It's at the end of a long day, when the three of them are exhausted, drenched in sweat and covered in scrapes and bruises, after Clint retires to his hotel room with a grunt for a goodbye, when Maria flips the script on him.

She pulls him into her room, grabs him by the shirt and yanks his mouth down to hers. It knocks Bucky senseless for a moment – the hot slide of her tongue against his, and the shameless, wanton promise in her eyes. There's nothing soft or tender about what follows, but somehow it's just what Bucky needs – to fuck and be fucked. And afterwards, when Maria gives him a gruff command to stay put and fall asleep beside her, well.

Sometimes even the Winter Soldier can take orders.

* * *

They're back in New York, when Steve watches Natasha take a bullet to the gut. He's seen something like it once before: during the war, he saw a twenty-two year old corporal take a hit in almost the exact same spot. But he refuses to let himself think about that, because that soldier died, and Natasha _isn't_ going to. She isn't.

The attack came as a surprise. Their intelligence hadn't told them that the warehouse they were sent to investigate would be filled with armed gunmen. Steve barely gets her out before they're both riddled with more bullets. If Natasha hadn't had the presence of mind to immediately call for backup from the team – Tony, Bruce, Clint, and Bucky – they might not have made it out at all.

Steve knows it isn't the first time she's been shot – he's seen the scars on her shoulder and left thigh – but he can't stop cursing himself for not being quicker, for not pushing her out of the way or taking the hit for her. She's in surgery for hours, and Bucky sits beside Steve in the waiting room, his hand on his shoulder. When Clint joins their vigil, Steve's too grief-stricken to think much of it, but the three of them exchange curt, masculine nods and sit together in silence.

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s medics stitch her back together, and Natasha's laid up in their hospital ward for weeks, halfheartedly fending off Steve's attempts at nursing her. She lets him adjust her pillows and bring her tea. Once, she lets him stay in the room while her bandages are changed, but when she sees how it makes his jaw clench and his hands ball into fists, she orders him away whenever the task repeats.

She's still in the hospital when Tony, Bruce, Bucky and Clint pull Steve away from her, out into the hospital corridor, and tell him to come away with them. Steve tries to argue that someone should stay with Natasha. Bucky gives him a dark, serious look and volunteers to stay behind.

The three men march Steve out of headquarters and over to Stark Tower. At Tony's command, JARVIS pulls up a series of documents on an oversize computer screen. Steve takes a long moment to take it all in: S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about the men in the warehouse – _Fury_ knew – and sent them in anyway, with no warning.

Blood boils in his veins. For the first time since Bucky fell, he feels downright _murderous_. He looks up at Clint, and sees the same look in his eyes.

"Fury set us up."

Clint gives him a nod.

Steve looks at Tony and Bruce, "What do we do now?"

Tony flashes a sardonic grin. "We start over."


	7. Whatever My Man Is, I Am His

**_Notes:_**I feel like this pairing is either unpopular or maybe just really rare, but I have Bucky/Maria feels. I hope this gives you some Bucky/Maria feels, too. More Steve/Natasha to come, after this.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story so far. I know it's taken some unorthodox turns. Reviews are always very, very appreciated.

* * *

Three hours after the meeting at Stark Tower, the Avengers Initiative team has gone AWOL on a Stark Industries jet to Los Angeles. All except Bucky, who tells Steve he has unfinished business in New York, but refuses to elaborate.

Bucky'll let them hash it out – the new plan, the new team and new headquarters. His head feels more upside-down now than it has since he came back, and he'd rather just let Steve tell him what to do later. It seems easier that way.

Until he's ready to go west, he stalks Maria through the city. The thought that _she_ – this woman he spent three weeks sleeping next to – could have had anything to do with the ambush that could have killed the two people he needs most makes his stomach turn. Before he leaves New York, he has to know for sure.

He tracks her one night after work. She has on a crisp trench coat and a prim pencil skirt. The straight line of her shoulders, the curve of her calves, makes him remember too much, and this is hardly the time for that. So the first chance he gets, he grabs her, one metal hand over her mouth, and yanks her into an empty alleyway.

He holds her tight by the arms and pushes her up against the wall; the coarse brick at her back scratches against the fabric of her jacket. Maria's eyes are wide, but unafraid.

"What the _fuck_ happened in that warehouse?" he snarls, because he didn't really think of a good opening question. But she knows whey they're here, so.

She doesn't flinch. "I had nothing to do with that. Fury never told me. I don't even know if _he_ knew."

His grip on her tightens and he hears her sharp inhale. He can picture the finger-shaped bruises she'll find there later tonight, and almost feels bad for hurting her.

She looks him straight in the eye. "I swear to you," she says, and he can tell she means it. And, God help him, he believes her.

He lets her go, but doesn't move away. He reaches around her, underneath her coat, and pulls her Glock out of its holster. Maria doesn't fight him; and she _doesn't_ let the feel of his arms around her remind her of what they shared in Buenos Aires.

He checks the safety and tucks it into his waistband. He knows she's got another pistol at her ankle, hidden in her boot, but if she goes for it, she won't come back up.

"Why?" he growls at her, still looming over her, invading her space.

She looks up at him. Her expression is hard, serious, professional.

"The Council thinks they're threats, that you're all threats. They wanted to control you and they can't."

"So they'll kill us?"

Maria shrugs and looks away. Bucky huffs and looks away too, just for a moment, just to collect his thoughts.

Her fist hits his stomach with a sickening _thud_, and then her gun is back in her hand, aimed straight at his head. He moves fast, pulling out his pistol and aiming it back at her. They stare each other down for a long moment, hands steady, safeties off. Bucky tries to hide his struggle to catch the breath she knocked out of him.

She flashes a smug smile and raises her hands, her finger off the trigger. Bucky growls and tucks his pistol back into its holster and she does the same. One of these days, he's going to have to get used to dames getting the better of him.

"Scared the bejesus out of me," he mutters, glaring at her even though he knows he had it coming.

He looks her up and down, rakes a hand through his unwashed hair. He wishes her smile – even the shit-eating, self-satisfied smirk she's giving him now – didn't make him think of how good it used to feel to make her laugh.

She sobers and tells him not to be dramatic; that it's not about killing anyone, just neutralizing threats. Somehow it isn't comforting.

"So what now? You'll go back to being Fury's lapdog?" he can't hide the resentment in his voice.

Her brow furrows, she looks at her feet.

"You shouldn't be here," she tells him, ignoring his question, "You should have left with the rest of them."

He shrugs, "I'll be gone soon enough."

She looks up at him. Her eyes, clear and blue even in the dim light, meet his, and what he sees there just about knocks him off his feet for the second time that night. She misses him. She wants him. She's fighting herself every step of the way. The sight of her – this immovable column of a woman, filled with longing for _him_ – is enough to drive him halfway to crazy.

James steps closer to her, closing the distance between them. She steps away, but her back hits the wall behind her. He's so close to her – he's all she can see and smell, and even though he isn't touching her, she can feel warmth radiating off of him.

"You think about me." It isn't a question.

She shakes her head unconvincingly.

"You do," he bends his head towards her, his lips ghosting across the soft skin at the side of her neck. She gasps when he slides one hand around her waist, down to the small of her back and one leg between hers, pinning her to the wall behind her. "You think about Argentina," he tells her; his voice is low and gravelly, "So do I."

It's not just a line; he has thought about it. _Hell_, he thinks about it all the damn time: how good – how _fucking_ good – she felt underneath him, how she could push him to the brink only to pull him back and start all over again, how they could reduce each other to shivering, sobbing messes, sprawled out across the bed. And how afterwards she would let him kiss her with his hands on either side of her face, his mouth moving against hers gently, gently.

He's got his fingers in her hair, his body pressed flush against hers, and he can feel her move against him, just barely.

"You need to go," she murmurs, "If the Council knew you were still here—"

Something rumbles in his chest and his hand fists in her hair and pulls. It shuts her up, at least. He holds her tight by the hair and around the waist; his mouth moves against her neck, his tongue and teeth sliding along the tendons in her neck. He works his way up to her mouth, and she kisses him back like she's on fire. It sends a rush of blood to his groin, and his hips rock against hers involuntarily. The sensation pulls a soft whine out from the back of her throat.

Maria knows better, and she knows this is bad. She knows that standing in this alley, with James Barnes pressed up against her, is a fireable offense at best. She wishes she could be shocked that he's hitching up her skirt. She wishes she didn't want him to. She wishes her hands weren't on his belt buckle, working frantically to get his zipper down. She wishes her legs didn't fit so well around his waist. She wishes she could tell him not to fuck her and kiss her and tell her how beautiful she is when she comes. She's spent a lifetime being strong, but with him, she wishes she were stronger.

And when he kisses her goodbye – and she knows it's goodbye, and she knows, now, that that's what he really wanted to say to her in the first place – she wishes it didn't make her heart sink.


End file.
